funded by the State of Florida and the local county. Furthermore, the MPI for Metals Research was converted to the MPI for Intelligent Systems and a sub-section of the institute was newly established at Tübingen. The Lead Discovery Center was founded as a new subsidiary in Dortmund in 2008 to improve the technology transfer of newly developed pharmaceutical drugs. The Society's international networking is particularly successful: After the publication of news on the foundation of the Florida Institute, which came to be seen as a "model", the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that the MPS had received requests from Canada and South Korea to establish institutes there. More than 40 per cent of the recently appointed Directors at the MPS are from outside of Germany, and 25 per cent of all Directors in the Max Planck Society are of non-German origin. In an interview published by Spiegel Online'', Gruss outlined a new strategy for establishing "Max Planck Centers" for cooperating with foreign research institutions; some of these are already in place in cities like Shanghai, Buenos Aires and New Delhi. Technology transfer Gruss championed the cause of transferring his findings into practical application: he co-funded the biopharmaceutical company DeveloGen AG in Göttingen (now part of Evotec) in 1997, together with fellow developmental biologists (Max Planck Society), Wolfgang Driever (University of Freiburg) and the entrepreneur Herbert Stadler. The company concentrated on developing new treatments for metabolic and endocrinological diseases with a special focus on diabetes. Awards and distinctions Gruss has won various awards for his research. In 1994 he was awarded the most highly endowed prize in German science, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 1995 he received the prestigious Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. In 1999, he was honored with the German Future Prize (the Federal President's Prize for Science and Technology) for his studies in molecular biology and the potential development of therapeutic procedures which they enabled. He received this prize together with Herbert Jäckle. Gruss received the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2009. Some of his other awards are 1992 Feldberg Prize 1995 Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine 1999 Science Prize of the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Science and Humanities in Germany 2004 Lower Saxony State Prize 2017 Harnack Medal of the Max Planck Society Memberships Gruss is a member of various national and