The Max Planck Society will have a new president next year. The chemist and molecular biologist Prof. Patrick Cramer will take over the office from Prof. Martin Stratmann at the upcoming MPG General Assembly. Together with the Secretary General of the MPG, Dr Simone Schwanitz, and the Head of the Institute Department, Dr Katja Ketterle, Patrick Cramer has now visited the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. To get to know each other better, he met with the directors, doctoral students and postdocs for talks. Cramer emphasised the importance of cohesion among all MPG staff. In difficult times, it is precisely science that can provide positive impulses and offer possible solutions to problems, the President-elect motivated.