MoA Co-Director Peter Fratzl Co-Leads New Max Planck Center in Brisbane

On February 3rd, the virtual inauguration of the Max Planck Queensland Center for the Materials Science of Extracellular Matrices (MPQC) took place. Together with Distinguished Professor Dietmar Hutmacher (Queensland University of Technology), MoA Co-Director Peter Fratzl (Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces) leads the first Max Planck Center on the Australian continent. The MPQC will explore extracellular matrices and their importance for medicine, ecology, and technology. »With this, we are putting a new field on the research map, focusing not only on biomedical applications, but also on technical ones, such as in architecture,« says Peter Fratzl.

The MPQC is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institutes of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam) and of Intelligent Systems (Stuttgart) and the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. The Center started its work on January 1, 2022, and will now collaborate on a total of seven projects for five years. Max Planck Centers are a central element of the Max Planck Society's internationalisation strategy, for more information see the website of the Max Planck Gesellschaft.

Also MoA members Cécile Bidan, Michaela Eder, and Richard Weinkamer were among those involved in the presentation of the research program during the ceremony and contributing to the collaboration in the future.

For more information about the research partnership see the press release of the MPIKG, and the press release of the Queensland University of Technology.