Hungarian Relationships

Memberships in Hungarian boards and committees

The Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences - MTA SZTAKI is a significant player in the Hungarian cultural and scientific community. SZTAKI units do consulting work; build solutions, systems, networks, software applications; for a wide range of clients - for instance the Internet Technologies Department of the Institute built and operates the Hungarian national high-speed research network backbone.

The different departments participate in consortiums with other research institutes, universities, business and state-owned organizations to perform projects of value to the Hungarian and the world communities. Two of the most complex and largest consortiums are:

• The Systems and Control Laboratory are members of the Commercial Vehicle Fleet Management System project consortium together with Knorr-Bremse Research and Development Center, the General Directorate for Public Security, Hungarian National Police, and the Budapest University of Technology Departments of Economics, Traffic Automation, Transport Technology; Automobile Engineering; Photogrammetry, Geo-informatics and Highway and Railway Engineering.
• A number of Departments and Research Units of the Institution are members of a consortium working to install an electronic public administration in the region of Kaposvár, a city in southern Hungary. The consortium that was put together with the ultimate goal of producing a framework for Electronic Public Administration; the other members of the consortium are, Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration, Municipality of Kaposvár, and MATÁV, the largest telephone provider in Hungary.

The Hungarian government acknowledges the value of the Institute’s work by supporting some of the Research and Development projects through grants. These grants come from several Ministries. The Institute’s researchers have a long history of cooperation with very many Hungarian educational establishments, many members of MTA SZTAKI tutor graduate and postgraduate students, give lectures, lead courses and manage university departments, doctoral schools and virtual institutes. MTA SZTAKI operates common chairs and post-graduate programs with a number of technical universities in Hungary.

The Institute has specific co-operation agreements and/or is affiliated with seven Hungarian universities:

• Budapest University of Technology and Economics
• Loránd Eötvös University of Sciences - Budapest
• Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration
• University of Veszprém
• Péter Pázmány Catholic University - Budapest
• University of Pécs
• University of Miskolc.

Hands-on courses are give on software usage. The Institute is accredited by to give certification of computer competence (ECDL). Researchers participate in the development of regional and national plans, strategies (e.g. the Hungarian National Information Infrastructure Development Program, building of subways in Budapest, etc.).

On-line services on this website provide the Hungarian public with assistance in fields such as linguistics and visual arts (e.g. the SZTAKI website has the most popular English-Hungarian on-line dictionary in the country; it also produced Hungary’s first digital art gallery). The Institute also added words to the Hungarian language – "honlap" = "home page" was introduced into the Hungarian language by Dr. Laszlo Kovacs, head of the Distributed Systems Department.

Many executives of the Hungarian IT sector once worked at SZTAKI or were mentored by its professors.