Collaboration agreement between the DIPC and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics
Prof. Ignacio Cirac and Prof. Pedro Miguel Etxenike signed the agreement in Donostia-San Sebastian today
The President of the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Pedro Miguel Etxenike, and Juan Ignacio Cirac, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), have signed a collaboration agreement between their two research centres this morning. The DIPC (Donostia-San Sebastian, Basque Country, Spain) is a research centre for fundamental physics in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science, and atomic physics and quantum optics, respectively. “This agreement has come about not before but after actual collaboration. The institutions DIPC and MPQ add visibility and importance to their long-standing cooperation activities by establishing a stable, long-term framework,” Pedro Miguel Etxenike points out. And Juan Ignacio Cirac adds: “The agreement is going to provide us with the necessary framework to put the existing collaboration on a firm footing and embark on new projects. At the MPQ we are convinced about the success of this cooperation.”
The main aim of the agreement is to drive forward new channels for cooperation and deepen the relationship between the researchers at the two centres. The recruitment of research personnel, the exchange of professionals, the organising of conferences, seminars and other activities will be promoted. The agreement also seeks to develop innovative scientific projects that combine lines of research in which the DIPC and the MPQ are already leaders.
Apart from maintaining close contacts, Pedro Miguel Etxenike and Juan Ignacio Cirac share one of the most esteemed awards in the scientific field: the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research. Both researchers have received a host of prizes, the most salient ones being the Wolf Prize in Physics, regarded as the threshold of the Nobel prize, awarded to Cirac in 2013; and the Max Planck Physics Prize which Etxenike received in 1998.
Cooperation between MPQ und DIPC has led to remarkable scientific progress in fundamental research. For example, a publication with the participation of researchers from the two centres was the front page of the prestigious journal Nature in 2007, and recently the researcher Geza Giedke – a close colleague of Juan Ignacio Cirac who has worked at MPQ for almost a decade – joined the DIPC thanks to the Ikerbasque Research Professor programme. Both Pedro Miguel Etxenike and Juan Ignacio Cirac like to point out that “internationality is a central characteristic of research and a key prerequisite for its success”.
