1993-1994 Sabbatical

Doing research in Germany Chris Ober's reflections on a sabbatic leave As a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institut fur Polymerforschung (MPI-P) in Mainz during a sabbatic leave last year, MS&E; Professor Christopher Ober got a first-hand look at how research is carried out in Germany. He also spent three weeks in Japan and Korea observing the university research situation. "With dedicated staff and researchers and a strong infrastructure, MPIs are very powerful research centers with no real equivalent in the United States," he wrote in a letter to Professor Dieter Ast. "All are associated with a university, since Ph.D. students may not receive a degree from the Max Planck society. Rather, each director is a professor at the nearby university, with enough staff and facilities to have groups of up to 40 graduate students."

He found that the facilities in the universities are not as good as those in the institutes, though they are generally better than those in most American universities. (This does not apply to Cornell, he pointed out. "In almost all cases," he wrote, "Cornell more than equals the capabilities of the MPI-P and the university.")

In Germany full professors benefit from guaranteed research support, Ober commented. "The U.S. system has the advantage that the funding system with peer review helps to filter out weaker ideas, but we are more subject to research fashions.

"This is in sharp contrast to the Japanese system," he noted. "There, the universities have poor facilities. Students pay their own tuition, even in graduate school, and generally stop at a B.S. or M.S. degree. University research is therefore carried out in crowded labs by undergraduates often funded by industry on applied projects. In Korea things are even worse, though rapidly improving."

During his stay at MPI-P, Ober's project was to investigate the possibility of building an organic zeolite using a surfactant as a template. Such a material could be used to make catalyst supports or membranes with unusual separation behavior. Working with specialists in X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy, he was able to produce films with 30 to 40 A structures in a controlled fashion. The work is connected to the reseach in liquid crystalline materials being done by his group at Cornell. The projects stem from Ober's interest in the use of self-organizing systems to build up complex structures.

During his stay in Mainz, Ober lived with his family in a high-rise apartment near the institute, and his two children attended a local elementary school. They all became fairly fluent in German.

The family enjoyed the experience of living in the ancient city, which dates back to the time of the Romans. They also explored the surrounding wine district along the Rhine and Mosel rivers, and took weekend trips to other parts of the country.

Last revised: 11/19/02