The President of Dongseo University, Chang Jekuk; the President of the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), Jörg Steinbach; and the Vice Mayor for Economic Affairs in Busan, Lee Ki Woo recently concluded a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at the Lotte Hotel in Busan on March 18th. The event was held to establish the Technical University of Berlin Research Center for Microalgae Biotechnology.
Under this agreement, the Technical University of Berlin will establish the Research Center for Microalgae Biotechnology at DSU and begin to research microalgae. This research could result in the production of higher value-added metabolites, so it is a very significant achievement for the research center to be established at DSU.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany has already agreed to contribute research funds of 200,000 euros to the Technical University of Berlin, which will send four German researchers to Busan to launch the research. A further 300,000,000 won will be provided by the Busan local government over the next two years. DSU will also support the provision of research space, equipment, and chemicals to the amount of one billion won, and four DSU researchers will also be provided.
Both TU Berlin and DSU will offer opportunities to a certain amount of students to visit the other university every year and actively engage with each other in exchange programs. Dongseo University and the Technical University of Berlin, which share a dual-degree graduate studies program in their Departments of Biotechnology, have granted dual degrees to fifty Korean students and one hundred German students so far. The dual-degree program in Biotechnology at the undergraduate level was initiated in March of this year.