Columbia researchers will gain team-member access to IPP facilities, including the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator and the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak, enabling collaboration in experiments.

Columbia University will establish a fixed-term assistant professor position for two years, filled twice during the center’s term, targeting leading researchers with teaching and research duties.

Columbia researchers will gain team-member status at IPP facilities—Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald and ASDEX Upgrade in Garching—and will establish a fixed-term two-year assistant professor position twice during the center’s term.

The collaboration will involve affiliate private-sector partners such as Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Proxima Fusion, Thea Energy, and Type One Energy to contribute use cases and ideas for fusion demonstration facilities.

The center is one of seven new Max Planck Centers launched this year as virtual centers of excellence to internationalize MPI research and foster collaboration with top international partners, lasting five years with a potential one-time extension.

The scientific program is organized into six work packages: Stellarator Power Exhaust; Hybrid Tokamak-Stellarators; Simulation of Transients; Non-Planar Superconducting Magnets; Energetic Particles in Stellarators; Edge Stability of Tokamaks, each led by IPP and Columbia coordinators.

Funding sources total $7.5 million from U.S. sources and €5 million from IPP, covering personnel, workshops, coordination, and researcher exchanges, with additional support from the Simons Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

The Max Planck Columbia Center, titled “Optimizing Symmetry in Fusion Plasmas,” will start in 2027 and operate for five years with a total budget of $13.3 million.

The center aims to combine tokamak and stellarator approaches to address scientific and technological questions on advancing toward a fusion power plant, with a focus on early-career researcher international experience.

Co-directors are Thomas Klinger of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and Carlos Paz-Soldan of Columbia University, reflecting a collaboration between MPG and Columbia Engineering.

A key component is the exchange of early-career researchers, potentially spending up to one year at partner facilities in Greifswald (IPP), Garching (IPP), or New York City.