News : Scientists need to work and cooperate globally: Peter Gruss, President of Germany’s Max Planck Society

Germany & South Asia: Peter Gruss, President of Germany’s Max Planck Society

Scientists need to work and cooperate globally: Peter Gruss, President of Germany’s Max Planck Society

February 03, 2010

On Wednesday, 3rd February, the Indo-German Max Planck Center for Computer Science (IMPECS) is inaugurated jointly by German President Horst Köhler and India’s Minister of Science & Technology Prithviraj Chavan at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. On this occasion, Peter Gruss, President of the Max Planck Society talks to the German Information Centre about the Society’s focus on India.

GIC: Professor Gruss, why do you consider India as a special focus of the Max Planck Society in its international collaborations?

Prof. Gruss: India is one of the key countries in certain areas of research, and it will be more important in the future. India has many talents all over the world. For the Max Planck Society there are at least two elements. On one side, research and science are international. So we have to have access to the places where excellent science is being conducted. And on the other side, of course, we are very interested in educating Indian scientists. Not just to educate and bring them to Germany, but also to support them, after training, to come back to India and establish their own research groups.

GIC: Can you elaborate on the level of cooperation that the Max Planck Society has with Indian research institutions and scientists?

Prof. Gruss: There are several levels at which we are interacting with India. The first level, so to speak, is the cooperation between scientists from various institutes. The Max Planck Society has a spectrum – from astronomy to life sciences, biology, genetics, to social sciences and we have many of these cooperations between India and Germany – between 40 and 50 – and that is something which shows that there is interest. So that’s one level. Obviously the level we also consider is to become an entity in India based on these cooperations, based on programmes. This is what we are currently trying to establish with the Indo-German Max Planck Center for Computer Science.

GIC: Can you explain the objectives of the Indo-German Max Planck Center for Computer Science at IIT Delhi and why it is being set up in India?

Prof. Gruss: India is well known all over the world as one of the key countries where Information Technology is at its best. For us, informatics generally is a very important field. There are many open questions, scientific questions – that need to be addressed. The Max Planck Society has to be, with their institutes, where the top research is being conducted.

Based on cooperation originally between our Max Planck Institute for Informatics and a partner group, we evolved this further into what we refer to as the Max Planck Center, with a certain institutional character. This will demand greater investments, more training for young people, and it will bring Max Planck scientists to India and Indian scientists to Max Planck Institute. That’s why I think this is the next logical step we needed to take.

GIC: As countries and institutions compete for international recognition and status, how do you approach the issue of globalisation of science?

Prof. Gruss: Science, by definition, is global. Most of the big problems or questions of humanity are global – be it climate, be it energy, be it health. These are global problems and global problems have to be addressed globally. So scientists need to work and cooperate globally and that’s what the Max Planck Society does. We interact at various levels, be it with PhD students, be it Post Docs, be it subsequently independent research up to the directors. We actually just hired a very young, very talented Indian as director at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems at Kaiserslautern. We are very happy that he decided to come.

I think science needs to be networked. It needs to interact. And this cannot be just virtual networks. You have to be together, you have to see each other, you have to talk to each other and you have to basically explore the talents of different individuals in order to get the best possible result. If you look at how the top-ranking international publications develop, there is rarely a publication with only one author. Most of these publications have many authors and most of them, again, have authors from all over the world. So science is a multinational cooperation because all that matters is talent and creativity and you have to take it from where it is.

GIC: What programmes does the Max Planck Society have in place to attract young researchers and scientists from outside Germany?

Prof. Gruss: We have, particularly for India, what is referred to as the ‘India Fellowship’. This is something very special for India, in order to get young people more informed about what the German research landscape has to offer. We have close to 30 India Fellows coming to Germany, travelling and getting information. We do provide another opportunity which is very attractive, especially for Indian students – the International Max Planck Research Schools. These are graduate training programmes. Here we have India at the top of foreign countries. In the regular graduate programme also, students from India are at the top of the scale. This is as far as training goes.

But training is a one-way process and we don’t want the one-way road. We also have programmes that bring gifted researchers back to India, and we call this Partner Groups. These Partner Groups are a wonderful tool and India is again the country where we have most Partner Groups – 14 of these young people. After having been trained as a Post Doc at a Max Planck Institute, they are evaluated through means of a competition. If they are successful, they can then bring Max Planck money to India for about five years. They can use this money to establish themselves and maintain contact with the respective Max Planck Institute they are coming from. We do see science as a two-way road. We train, but we also provide incentives for the best minds to come back to their country of choice.

GIC: The adoption of basic science and research into commercial applications is not always easy. How does the Max Planck Society work in this area?

Prof. Gruss: Since our mission is basic research, it means that our scientists are highly specialised to generate knowledge. That means at least the vast majority is not specialised in translating their knowledge into commercially interesting products. In order to do this, at the end of the ‘60s we had started a technology-transfer company. At that time it was called 'Garching Instruments'. Now we have renamed it to 'Max Planck Innovation'. 'Max Planck Innovation' is an independent company which is fully-owned by the Max Planck Society. It is a limited company which has its own expert personnel coming from the interface of science and business. Their sole job is to scout within the Max Planck Society for new products, new ideas, new concepts, and find an ideal way to translate these into products.

There are many options here. For example, in the field of informatics, you can immediately sell software programmes for instance. In the field of biosciences you can write a patent – Max Planck Innovation helps you with the patent application. And at the end of the day you can then sell the patent or use the patent as a basis for a new start-up company. So there’s a broad spectrum of what Max Planck Innovation has to offer. This provides extra income for Max Planck. But that’s really only one element. What the Max Planck Society also provides for all of society is new knowledge, is highly trained people. Economists can add up the value of what we return to society, with respect to the national economy.

One component of this is our immediate income from patents, from licenses. The Max Planck makes about 20 million USD a year. We have a great history marketing Max Planck intellectual property. The greatest patent ever, by the way, was polyethylene and polypropylene – plastic. It has been the most profitable patent ever written.

GIC: In Bangalore, you meet with the chief mentor of Infosys, Mr. Narayana Murthy. What would your discussions with him focus on?

Prof. Gruss: Well you see, when you do science nowadays, people will ask – what is this good for? It’s very easy, in some instances, to show direct relevance. In other areas it’s not so easy to show direct relevance. But if you go for instance into the field of biology, biosciences or informatics, there’s literally no border between basic research and application. At the Max Planck Society we have a mission to do basic research. But in those areas there is really no threshold between basic research and applied research. You have to show what could be possible products to the societies that finance you. This is what I do in Germany as well, not just in India. I lead discussions with big companies to tell them what Max Planck is all about, what Max Planck can deliver.

Most of these companies are actually very interested in the early results so that they can subsequently try to think, what could one do with those early results – which you can’t market a priori – to take those early results and develop them into a product that is commercially interesting for any market. That’s why it’s quite natural for me to talk to the CEOs of big companies. In this particular case it is, of course, a very successful company and I am very much looking forward to Mr. Narayana Murthy’s vision, to present what Max Planck is like. My understanding is that he is also very interested in basic research in general. So this is a perfect match.

South Korea, for example, is doing very well in the world market in the high-tech field. They realised that unless they foster creative minds to open new doors, also in basic research, they will not compete for long. What you are selling today is knowledge that comes from yesterday. So today you have to generate the knowledge in order to make the products of tomorrow. Every smart country has a balance between these two. Smart enterprises, like Infosys, have to be very much on the lookout for what is knowledge today that you can market tomorrow.

As long as our mission – to do basic research – is not impaired, we have all kinds of instruments that allow co-financing. There are many things we can structure, including private money, philanthropic money. But one thing has to be assured. We are a curiosity-driven organisation. We do not accept our scientists doing research on demand.

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Max Planck Society steps up research cooperation with India