Potsdam. The Research School of the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) will soon add offshoots in other countries. The HPI Research School announced that it is planning to establish international branches in cooperation with universities in South Africa and Israel. Another potentially interesting destination for the future would be Russia.
"We already have received specific proposals for research projects from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, and are currently in negotiations with the University of Cape Town," HPI director Prof. Christoph Meinel said. The HPI hopes to establish a strong, fruitful cooperation with internationally renowned professors and young computer scientists based on the model used at the HPI Research School.
Founded in 2005, the Research School provides an environment where all HPI professors jointly supervise PhD students and postdoctoral researchers. Each research fellow brings the unique perspective from his or her respective field to the school’s main research area – Service-Oriented Systems Engineering. In weekly seminars the scientists discuss their work and new developments in their fields. In addition, they attend workshops and symposia, and closed conferences are held twice a year where they present their results and discuss on how to proceed further. There are currently 19 young researchers at the HPI Research School. Each year eight PhD grants and two postdoctoral fellowships are available for highly talented applicants.
"Representatives of universities in other countries approached us and asked us whether we would be interested in working with them to establish this model at their institutions," Meinel said. This allows the HPI to expand the scope of its research while providing foreign partners with the HPI’s international contacts and giving them the opportunity to benefit from an intensive academic exchange with researchers in various countries.
The spokesperson of the HPI Research School, Prof. Andreas Polze, described the arrangement as follows: "The young researchers will work at their universities abroad but will receive grants from the HPI in Germany." Their work will be integrated into the research activities at the HPI Research School in Potsdam, with professors at their home institutions providing academic supervision jointly with the HPI faculty. They will also participate in HPI conferences and symposia. "In addition, we plan to establish an exchange program among the participating institutions and work together to acquire new research projects," Polze added.
