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INVENTED IN HUNGARY
SUPPORTING KNOWLEDGE CREATION In the digital era, the progress of countries depends largely on how efficiently they can bring together research, development and innovation. This may seem an easy task, but many needs and possibilities must be integrated and, not least, motivated. These are the main roles of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH). The Budapest Business Journal talked with its president, Zoltán Birkner, about the office’s future plans. By Kálmán Béres BBJ: What opportunities does NKFIH have to invigorate Hungarian innovation, especially among young professionals? Zoltán Birkner: The Hungarian government, the Ministry for Innovation and Technology has supported expanding the creation of knowledge, catalyzed setting up the elements connecting knowledge bases and knowledge users, and also catalyzed a more receptive approach of companies towards innovation. This is how this whole context starts becoming a coherent system. How are we supporting knowledge creation? The government, and the NKFIH, has selected and is providing funds for the education of new scientists, for research and institutional excellence, which will contribute to stabilizing the operation of universities and research facilities. An important practical step
was starting the Cooperative PhD Program, which is, on the one hand, an important instrument in preparing new scientists, and on the other hand strengthens cooperation between industries and universities. We had 100 openings for the program, and 536 applications. This is an extraordinary response, given that we announced it after the standard PhD program had been announced, so universities and PhD centers needed to provide new exams for this huge wave of new applicants. BBJ: What is the role of the universities from the NKFIH perspective? ZB: One of our main focus points is the Program for Thematic Excellence. Within this, we provide financial support for researches on global challenges conducted by universities and research centers, as well as for research programs based on institutional excellence. We expect
the supported institutions to acquire a deep expertise in some areas and to concentrate on these areas with a scientific thoroughness, focusing on the results and usefulness of that specific research. Minister for Innovation and Technology László Palkovics recently announced a similarly important program on national labs. Altogether there are 18 such labs, aimed at fostering the cooperation of all key Hungarian players of a specific area on a focus issue. A great example is the huge program related to digital transition and on artificial intelligence. Scientists, universities, research facilities and companies that excel in the field of AI joined their efforts to create centers able to achieve significant results and that could also be attractive for large international R&D projects. An equally important initiative is the development of competence centers. Universities are cooperating with industrial partners to expand together or to make developments in a specific area. We will set up 10 such competence centers countrywide. One exciting example is the center of competence focusing on the transition to a circular economy. Pannon University, together with MOL, Hidrofilt Kft. and some other local companies joined forces to process together the basic research, development and sectoral issues on the circular economy. Obviously, the research is not the most important on its own, yet the practical results and developments it provides and the economic potential it generates are. The competence center model has two main messages: on the one hand, universities and companies must cooperate to achieve success, and on the other, they should be in service of market demands. More specifically, the “output” of this cooperation must always be a new product or service for the market.
