Visit to Europe's Largest Bio Cluster Basel, Switzerland
Listening to Bio Industry Trends and Introducing Pohang's Bio Strengths
Mayor Lee Kang-deok: "Full Effort for Pohang Biomedical Cluster"
On the 30th and 31st, Pohang City visited Basel City and Basel-Landschaft Canton in Switzerland, the largest bioindustry hub in Europe and a key base for startup development, to expand global partnerships and secure a super-gap competitiveness in the bioindustry, a core future growth engine of the region.
On the 30th, Lee Kang-deok, mayor of Pohang, visited the research-focused hospital, University Hospital Basel in Switzerland, and received an explanation about the related facilities from Professor Heinz Loebli.
On the 30th, Mayor Lee Kang-deok of Pohang visited the University Hospital of Basel, a research-centered hospital with over 200 years of history, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (TPH), which focuses on global public health and epidemiology research, as well as the Basel University Innovation Center and Innovation Park Basel, key hubs for Swiss startups.
Mayor Lee visited the University Hospital of Basel, a research-centered hospital, and outlined a blueprint for Pohang’s key pledge, the establishment of the POSTECH Medical School and Smart Hospital. He held a meeting with Professor Heinz Laubli, a physician-scientist, and requested mutual exchange and cooperation with excellent local R&D institutions such as POSTECH and Handong Global University as partners in disease treatment research.
He then visited the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (TPH), where he received an explanation on the importance of public health and future public health policies for the aging era using AI from Director J?rg Utzinger. TPH highly evaluated Pohang’s excellent bio R&D infrastructure and proposed continuous exchange and cooperation.
On the 30th, Mayor Lee Gang-deok visited the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (TPH) to receive an explanation on public health policies and explore ways to promote exchange and cooperation.
He also visited the Basel University Innovation Center and Innovation Park Basel, where he met with Center Director Christian Schneider. They discussed the Swiss startup support system, acceleration processes such as technology transfer and investor matching, and success cases, exploring ways to integrate these with Pohang’s startup ecosystem.
On the 30th, Mayor Lee visited the Basel University Innovation Center and received an explanation about the facilities from Christian Schneider, the center director.
In the final schedule of the day, Mayor Lee held a meeting with members of the Swiss Korean Pharmaceutical Bio Network (KSBPN, President Kim Ju-ha) to listen to opinions on trends in the European pharmaceutical bio ecosystem and strategies for Pohang bio companies’ overseas expansion.
Mayor Lee Kang-deok said, “Visiting the core institutions of the Swiss bioindustry allowed me to confirm the driving force behind Basel’s establishment as a world-class city. We will continue efforts not only to foster related industries but also to globalize local universities and improve urban living conditions so that Pohang can grow into a sustainable bio cluster.”
The Basel region, with a population of about 500,000 similar to Pohang, is home to about 700 bioindustry companies and over 1,000 research institutions. Notably, it hosts the headquarters of world-leading pharmaceutical companies Novartis and Roche, as well as the University of Basel, Switzerland’s oldest university, and the research-centered University Hospital of Basel.
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