Associated partners

University of Kyoto, Clockhouse.

Japan offers excellent Large Scale Facilities and has also a very strong industrial interest to use e.g. synchrotron radiation for lithography in semiconductor industries and its neutrons sources for material sciences and engineering.

All Japanese partner institutions (“Institute of Chemical Research” at Kyoto University, “Graduate school of Chemistry” at Kyoto University and the “Center of Crystal Growth and Technology” at the University of Kofu) must be ranked on the top level of their research activities worldwide.

As all partners belong to the leading groups world wide in their discipline this is as a chance for our students to undergo internships in these laboratories and to get an excellent research thematic and activities for their Master thesis.

Tokyo Institute of Technology, Mamaself partner institution

Tokyo Tech is the top national university for science and technology in Japan with a history spanning more than 130 years. Of the approximately 10,000 students at the Ookayama, Suzukakedai, and Tamachi Campuses, half are in their bachelor's degree program while the other half are in master's and doctoral degree programs. International students number 1,200. There are 1,200 faculty and 600 administrative and technical staff members.
In the 21st century, the role of science and technology universities has become increasingly important. Tokyo Tech continues to develop global leaders in the fields of science and technology, and contributes to the betterment of society through its research, focusing on solutions to global issues. The Institute's long-term goal is to become the world's leading science and technology university.
Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) is one of the leading and top ranked universities for Science and Technology in Japan. Scientific groups of the university, especially the Department of Materials Science, have continued fruitful cooperation  with the MaMaSelf member universities, especially the University of Rennes 1. The science driving these collaborations encompasses multifunctional materials, laser driven material transformations, and the cutting edge experiments on large scale facilities such as around Synchrotron sources and Free Electron Lasers. This collaboration includes collaborative grants (NEDO, ERATO, …) and student exchanges.
In January 2017 an Associated International Laboratory, LIA IM-LED, “Impacting materials with light and electric fields and watching real time dynamics”, will be created. This a “laboratory without walls” coordinated by Rennes and Tokyo and which includes on the one hand CNRS and three other universities from the west part of France and on the other hand TIT and three other Japanese universities, Tokyo, Kyoto and Tohoku. It is constructed around three main research lines:
    •    Ultrafast photoinduced phenomena – Disentangling and controlling electronic and structural dynamics.
    •    Switching correlated materials by light an electric field impact –Toward strong field physics.
    •    Governing light driven bistability in materials by elastic fields – Toward non volatile memory.
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Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland, Mamaself partner institution

The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is the largest research center for natural and engineering sciences within Switzerland. PSI is located in the Zurich area and part of the ETH domain, directly connected to the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Zürich and EPFL Lausanne, as well as the Federal Laboratory for Material Science and Technology EMPA.
PSI employs 2200 people with an annual budget of approximately CHF 400 million and is primarily financed by the Swiss Confederation. PSI is committed to the training of future generations. Therefore about one quarter of our staff are apprentices, post-graduates or post-docs.
PSI operates several large scale facilities such as the neutron spallation source SINQ, the synchrotron SLS, the free electron laser SwissFEL, the world’s most intense muon source as well as an ultra cold neutron source for basic research in physics, chemistry, biology and materials research. Every year, more than 2500 scientists from Switzerland and around the world come to PSI to use our unique facilities to carry out experiments that are not possible anywhere else.
PSI is a long-term associated partner of the MaMaSelf program. Numerous MaMaSELF students did an internship or their master-thesis and some of them went on to obtain their PhD or work as a scientist at PSI.

IIT Madras, India, Mamaself partner institution

Indian Institute of Technology Madras is known both nationally and internationally for excellence in technical education, basic and applied research, innovation, entrepreneurship and industrial consultancy. IIT Madras, established in 1959 with assistance from German Government, is a residential institute with nearly 700 faculty, 10,000 students and 1250 administrative & supporting staff and is a self-contained campus located in a beautiful wooded land of about 250 hectares. The campus is located in the city of Chennai, previously known as Madras. Chennai is the state capital of Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India with a great history.
The Institute has sixteen academic departments and a few advanced research centres in various disciplines of engineering and pure sciences, with nearly 100 laboratories organised in a unique pattern.
IIT Madras has been the top-ranked engineering institute in India for four consecutive years as well as  the ‘Best Educational Institution’ in Overall Category in the NIRF Rankings of 2019 put out by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.
IIT Madras faculty are involved in cutting-edge research and it has the privilege of having best teachers imparting knowledge to thousands of students every year. IIT Madras attracts many students from around the world. The Institute has many joint degree programs at Master and Ph.D. levels. The Mamaself Master’s course has foreseen an outgoing mobility of students to IIT Madras to carry out part of their Master thesis in India. Students are welcome to this beautiful campus to learn academically and at the same time enjoy the cultural heritage.

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The Universidade de São Paulo (USP) is the oldest University in Brazil and one of the most prestigious higher education and research institutions in Latin America. With campuses distributed over seven cities (Bauru, Lorena, Piracicaba, Pirassununga, Ribeirão Preto, São Carlos and São Paulo), USP has over 90,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 5,900 faculty members. USP has 42 colleges, 240 undergraduate programs and more than 220 postgraduate programs in all academic areas delivering 2,300 PhD degrees each year. Its total scientific publication output corresponds to 22% of that generated in Brazil.

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University of Helsinki campus

University of Helsinki is one of the top 1% research universities in the world. The University of Helsinki is the oldest and largest university in Finland with the widest range of disciplines available. Over 30,000 students were enrolled in the degree programs of the university in 11 faculties and 11 research institutes. Its Faculty of Science hosts 6000 students and 1200 staff members, in six Departments.

The Department of Physics focuses on particle physics, astrophysics and space physics, astronomy, materials physics, nanophysics and biophysics. The Department of Chemistry carries out research in materials chemistry, molecular science, synthesis and analysis.

The Master's Programme in Materials Research (MATRES) is joint between the Department of Physics and Department of Chemistry. The research areas in the MATRES are experimental materials physics, computational materials physics, medical physics and biophysics, polymer materials chemistry, inorganic materials chemistry, as well as electronics and industrial applications. A broad spectrum of characterisation, modification and growth methods is used for a large variety of materials. Experimental materials physics uses ion beams, x-rays and synchrotron light for fundamental and applied research. Polymer materials chemistry combines synthetic polymer chemistry, fundamental polymer physics, and colloid chemistry, functional materials, wood chemistry, polymers in medicine and more. Inorganic materials chemistry research centers on the development of a wealth of inorganic nanomaterials. These include various nanoparticle systems, thin films, fibers, and porous materials.

The synchrotron light source SOLEIL is a national French 3rd generation synchrotron operated in Saclay by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives). SOLEIL was set in replacement of the older French synchrotron light-source LURE (Orsay) and delivered its first photons in 2008. SOLEIL offers to researchers 32 beamlines covering a wide range of spectroscopic methods from infrared to X-rays, and structural methods in X-ray diffraction and diffusion. Main research domains are physics, chemistry, material sciences, life sciences (notably in the crystallography of biological macromolecules), earth sciences, and atmospheric sciences.

High-technology facility, SOLEIL is a very brilliant electromagnetic radiation source. It is a cutting edge pluridisciplinary research laboratory, a service platform open to all scientific and industrial communities, Synschrotron Soleil is welcoming Mamaself students in internships, Master thesis and PhD since many years. Syncchrotron Soleil is now Mamaself associated partners in the new Mamaself2 program.

More information  https://www.synchrotron-soleil.fr/fr

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) under a contract with the DOE, located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Its scientific programs focus on materials, nuclear science, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology and national security, sometimes in partnership with the state of Tennessee, universities and other industries.
ORNL has several of the world's top supercomputers, including Frontier, ranked by the TOP500 as the world's most powerful. The lab is a leading neutron and nuclear power research facility that includes the Spallation Neutron Source, the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory has joined the Master Mamaself as associated partner institution in 2022.

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The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), located in Grenoble France, is one of the most intense source of synchrotron generated X-rays light, worldwide competing with other 3rd generation synchrotron sources in the US (APS) and Japan (Spring-8). Funded by 13 member states and 8 scientific associates, ESRF allow about 6500 scientific visitors per year to access 43 beamlines, specialized in one of the following domains: hard condensed matter science, applied material science, engineering, chemistry, soft condensed matter science, life sciences, structural biology, medicine, earth and science, environment, cultural heritage, methods and instrumentation.
For materials science investigations, techniques of preference such as diffraction, spectroscopy or imaging reach extremely high resolution and performance due to the very high brilliance and low convergence of synchrotron light beam. This allows highly micro-focused analyses or ultra-fast time-resolved experiments down to a resolution of a few picoseconds.

ALBA is a 3rd generation synchrotron light facility located near Barcelona in Spain, which delivered its first photons to beamlines in 2012. ALBA currently operates ten soft and hard X-rays beamlines, mainly devoted to biosciences, condensed matter, and materials science. Four additional beamlines will be available in 2023. About 6000 hours of allocated beamtime serve more than 2000 researchers every year (among which ~35% from out of Spain). The beamlines cover a wide range of characterization techniques such as Infra-Red, X-ray absorption, photo-emission and dichroism spectroscopies, powder diffraction and macromolecular crystallography, tomography, and metrology.

More information https://www.albasynchrotron.es/en

The NSF’s ChemMatCARS – University of Chicago – operates three experimental stations in the areas of advanced small-molecule crystallography, liquid surface and interface scattering, and small to wide-angle scattering at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), at Argone National Labs near Chicago, USA, one of the world leading synchrotron sources in the wolrd. ChemMatCars is funded by the Divisions of Chemistry (CHE) and Materials Research (DMR) of the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The wide energy range (7-70keV) combined with bending magnet and undulator beamlines allows advanced experiments in:
•    Crystallography techniques on inorganic and small molecule crystals (resonance diffraction, photo-crystallography, high-resolution charge density studies, high-pressure studies, microcrystallography),
•    Surface scattering to probe molecular and mesoscale structure at liquid-vapor and liquid-liquid interfaces,
•    Anomalous small angle x-ray scattering (ASAXS) to focuse on element specific structural study of soft matter systems such as polyelectrolytes, colloids, polymers, macro-ions in solutions, and nanomaterials at the length scales from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers.

The IMDEA Nanoscience institute is an interdisciplinary research Centre dedicated to the exploration of nanoscience and the development of applications of nanotechnology in connection with innovative industries. At IMDEA Nanoscience institute, 210 researchers, about 100 PhD students run more than 40 different projects (with about half of them being European projects) based on 6 main programs:
•    Nanotechnology for Energy Harvesting
•    Quantum Materials at the Nanoscale
•    Nanotechnology for Health Care
•    Nanomagnetism for Information and Communication Technologies
•    Ultrafast phenomena at the Nanoscale
•    Nanotechnology for Critical Raw Materials Sustainability