The Max Planck Society to meet in Potsdam

64th Annual Meeting to take place in the state capital of Brandenburg

May 28, 2013

This year’s Annual Meeting of the Max Planck Society will be held on 5 and 6 June 2013 in Potsdam. Around 600 guests are expected to attend representing science, politics and industry, among them several of the Max Planck Society’s Nobel laureates. The new Federal Minister of Education and Research, Johanna Wanka, will address the Plenary Assembly in the Nikolaisaal for the first time.

“Excellent science is only possible through cooperation with the best of the best worldwide. Just how the MPS does this, and its crucial importance for Germany as a science location, will become manifest in the course of the Plenary Assembly,” explained Max Planck President Peter Gruss. The particular focus of the Plenary Assembly on this occasion will be on internationalisation. The keynote presentation will be delivered by David Fitzpatrick, Director at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, MPS’s first overseas institute in the USA. In addition to Minister Wanka and Brandenburg’s Minister of Science Sabine Kunst, other speakers will include molecular biologist Anne Glover, senior scientific adviser to EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

Brandenburg is home to three Max Planck institutes, all of which are located in Potsdam: The MPI of Colloids and Interfaces, the MPI of Molecular Plant Physiology and the MPI for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute). The last time the Max Planck Society met in the Brandenburg capital was in 1995.

The Members of the Max Planck Society (MPS) congregate each year in a different federal state for their Annual Meeting, during which the principal bodies of the Society, including the Executive Committee and the Senate, are also convened.

Also on 5 June, the Hans Otto Theater will provide the setting for the presentation of the 2013 Stifterverband Science Award to Jens Frahm, scientist at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. Prof. Frahm is being awarded the prize for his pioneering research, which has turned magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) into a standard diagnostic tool in the field of medicine and made it possible to view images of the heart in real time. The Stifterverband Science Award is valued at € 50,000 and is presented for outstanding basic research.

The Max Planck Society currently employs around 17,000 staff, among them 5,400 scientists, at its 82 institutes. In addition, there are also some 13,100 junior and visiting scientists working at the Max Planck institutes. Besides the 76 institutes in Germany, there are two Art History institutes in Italy, a Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, an institute in Florida/USA dedicated to neuroscience as well as the recently founded MPI Luxembourg for International European and Regulatory Procedural Law.

With an annual budget of 1.66 billion euros, the Max Planck Society is engaged in non-application-specific basic research in the life sciences, natural sciences and human sciences. To date, 17 Max Planck scientists have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

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