The first four Max Planck Partner Groups will be ceremoniously inaugurated on December 17, 2004 within the framework of a gala event at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi. Professor Dr. Kurt Mehlhorn, Vice President of the Max Planck Society, and Professor Dr. V.S. Ramamurthy, State Secretary at the Indian Department of Science & Technology will welcome several Directors from prestigious Indian research facilities, as well as from diverse Max Planck Institutes, including the Nobel Prize winner Professor Dr. Hartmut Michel from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, who will hold a talk on "Membrane Proteins as Targets for Drugs in Medicine and Agriculture." As well, in the course of the event the first six "Max Planck Indian Fellowships" will be awarded to Indian junior scientists.

Scientific Partner Groups of the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Partner Groups) can be established together with a foreign research institute when an outstanding junior scientist, subsequent to completing his or her research residency at a Max Planck Institute, returns to a productive homeland laboratory in order to continue research work that is also in the interest of his or her former hosting Max Planck Institute. Lasting relations between the Max Planck Institutes and former foreign guest scientists are the goal of these Partner Groups. To this end, the Max Planck Society will make 20,000 euros per Partner Group available over a five-year period.

As of January 1, 2005 four Partner Groups will begin their work with their research focus spanning the areas of astrophysics and material research through to informatics:

- Dr. Sudipto Roy Barman will head a Max Planck Partner Group from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society Berlin with the topic "Electronic structures of low dimensional and nano systems" at the Inter Unive
'"/>