Our Achievements
The Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI) is the Hungary's research and development and centre of information technology, computer science and their related fields.
Research Division - does research primarily in the area of the technical-scientific and mathematical issues of informatics. The development aspects are the resort of the Development Division – seeks to design systems for industry, does technical consulting and develops/integrates software and hardware systems. The Institutes activities can be characterized as "R&D in C3I" (Computing, Control, Communication, and Intelligence).
The EU has granted MTA SZTAKI the title of Centre of Excellence. Members of the Institute are represented in various prestigious scientific organizations, such as the CIRP, IEEE, IFAC, IFIP, IMACS, IMEKO, etc.
The Development Division is responsible for the lion’s share of the commercial. While the Division is doing considerable amount of funded applied research, the financial successes of the Division often results from cooperation with the industrial rather than the academic world.
The Division is broken down into Departments:
Some of the commercial activities and successes of the departments associated with the Development Division include:-THE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS DEPARTMENTS (DSD): The DSD develops and maintains many World Wide Web home pages and performs other interactive web services for Ministries and State Offices as well as other National Institutes. DSD runs the websites of the Prime Minister's Office as well as the site of the Hungarian Government and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences an many more.
Environmental impact studies for General Electric Ltd., MOM Park (shopping and recreation centre in Budapest), Dunamenti Power Station, a waste battery recycling firm and a composting plant, regional waste-material depositories, a sewage sludge composting plant, and active aluminum foundry dross depository are some of the commercial accomplishments of The DEPARTMENT OF OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND DECISION SYSTEMS
The INFOCOMMUNICATIONS CENTER - maybe a misnomer as the Center deals with hardware and software development. In the area of hardware, the department has supplied a large portion of the Hungarian printing and printed circuit board industry with laser scanning equipment - more recently the Center has developed a Archive Film Recovery System that uses digital and analog state-of-the art technology to recover old damaged films .
In software, the department’s activity includes the design and deployment of appropriate "mechanism" for the protection of networks against cracking and service attacks. Such "mechanisms" also analyze and audit networked IT systems. The Department also provide banks and multi-location retail outlets multiplexing systems for point of sale (POS) applications. In the banking sphere the Department developed the hardware and software to interface the earlier X.25 transmission system to the current Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
The implementation and management of the Hungarian national high-speed research network backbone - the "HBONE", the Hungarian Inter-Ministerial network and other large scale networks were designed, developed and deployed by THE INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES AND APPLICATIONS CENTER. The Center developed The Hungarian National Information Infrastructure and provides technology consulting services for such corporations as Matav & PanTel Hungarian telecommunications companies, Paks Nuclear Power Plant (Hungary), the Hungarian Foreign Trade Bank, The National Savings and Commercial Bank (OTP - the biggest Hungarian bank). Together with EuroWeb Rt. a European ISP, the Center developed the Hungarian Information House website, a "Company Registry" that contains the most important data about approximately 600,000 Hungarian firms; a unique service that includes a feature called "Bankruptcy Watch Online". Another joint undertaking with EuroWeb Rt. is The Hungarian Tourists' Guide.
The website of the state owned Hungarian company Szerencsejáték Rt. (National Lottery) (www.szerencsejatek.hu) and the software behind the site was written and is maintained by the Center. The programming technology makes the site very secure and extremely fast despite the very confidential nature of the database. For statistical analysis, the Center designed and developed an extremely large and complex software application which supports web based market research for a Seattle (USA) based E-business company - Global Market Insite).
Although fundamentally, the Research Division is concerned with research, The Division contributes significantly to the development and consulting activities of the Institute. In addition the members of the Departments of both Divisions carry out extensive post graduate and graduate educational activities. The Research Division offers the research capacity of about 80 full-time researchers with a significant number having Ph.D. degrees.
The Division is divided into the following units:
Achievements of research units and their individual members are measured in a complex way, in course of which, in addition to the usual scientometric approaches (e.g. Science Citation Index), among other things, contribution to university education constitutes an important factor.
Educational activities of the Research Division proceed in a coordinated manner, mostly in the framework of the Institute's co-operation agreements signed with the following universities in Hungary:
- Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME),
- Loránd Eötvös University of Sciences, Budapest (ELTE),
- Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (BKÁE),
- University of Veszprém (VE),
- University of Pécs (UP),
- University of Miskolc (ME),
- Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Budapest (PPKE).
University departments are run at the Institute, i.e., the Department of Decisions in Economy (with BKÁE), the Department of Information Sciences (ELTE) and the Department of Integrated Production Information Systems (BME). The Dynamics and Control Systems Centre was founded together with the Faculty of Transportation at the BME. SZTAKI significantly contributed to establishing the Faculty of Information Technology at the PPKE.
Generally, about 30 Ph.D. students do research at the Institute, under the scientific leadership of our colleagues. In the recently introduced Doctoral Schools in Hungary, our members of MTA SZTAKI act as external foundation members in about 25 cases and as internal foundation members in about 5 cases. Besides the on-going co-operation schemes (part-time employment of our researchers, associated department, and co-operation in establishing faculties in informatics), we intend to develop new forms of co-operation (common chairs, possibly common doctoral schools). Of the fourteen projects supported in the IT category by the Hungarian National Research and Development Program in 2001, the Institute acts as a coordinator of five and is a participant in two – these projects are:
- Commercial vehicle fleet management system.
- Sensing computers and telepresence.
- Knowledge-intensive information technology for the safe and optimal operation of complex industrial systems.
- Digital techniques for the restoration of movie-films.
- Digital enterprises, production networks.
- Information security technology and data insurance.
- Demand-driven information tools and systems of information society.
The above enumeration suggests that the Institute concentrates on much more than informatics, it does interdisciplinary research and development in branches of science such as material-, life- and social sciences, mathematics, artificial intelligence, system and control science, automation, operations research which strengthens the Institute's infrastructure. MTA SZTAKI’s co-operation with outstanding large and multinational companies, such as GE, MATAV, MOL, Nuclear Power Plant, Paks is broadened through the above projects, and similarly, the participation of some small enterprises ensures that our results should benefit the widest possible circle of companies and people.
At the moment, preparing our Institute for EU VI Framework projects is perhaps the Institute most important activity.
