For many years, there have been very close links between TU Dresden and partners in Korea. In March 2014, this connection was highlighted by the visit of the President of the Republic of Korea, Geun-hye Park, to Dresden and the honorary doctorate which she was awarded from TU Dresden. To foster further binational synergies, TU Dresden now teams up with renowned Korean research institutions to establish an International Research Training Group on Materials Science, a central field in academic and industrial research in both countries.
The formal signing ceremony took place alongside the Joint Korean German Conference "Science and Innovation", which was attended by the German Federal President, Joachim Gauck. The foundation of the International Research Training Group was announced during the opening ceremony of this event and is recorded in the photograph of Federal President Gauck with Prof. Doh-Yeon Kim (Pohang University of Science and Technology), Prof. Mooyoung Jung (UNIST) and Prof. Hans Müller-Steinhagen (TU Dresden), the presidents of three of the four institutions involved.
The aim of the International Excellence Graduate School on Emerging Materials and Processes is to train ten PhD students, five from Germany and five from Korea, in a synergetic way in current topics of materials research for applications in electronics, energy and medical technologies. "I am very glad that we were able to establish this strong binational Graduate School to deepen our contacts with research partners in Korea," said Prof. Hans Müller-Steinhagen, the Rector of TU Dresden, after signing the Letter of Intent and added: "The PhD students will be working on highly innovative topics and they will greatly benefit from the close cooperation within the network of excellent partners in Germany and Korea." To allow them to gain international research experience and to promote the synergetic approach, the German and Korean PhD students will each spend six months at an institution in the partner country.
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TU Dresden is among the top universities in Germany and Europe: strong in research, first-rate study programmes and close ties to culture, industry and society. TU Dresden was selected as one of eleven universities of excellence in the German government's national Excellence Initiative. It is a modern comprehensive university with 14 departments and about 37,000 students.