2016 was again a successful year for SZTAKI

2016 brought us numerous professional programmes, opportunities for scientific cooperation and industrial innovation. Besides the achievements of traditionally high quality in basic research, the Institute placed great emphasis on the applications in the private sector as well as the services rendered to the communities providing them significant societal benefits.    

This year, researchers of SZTAKI were active in producing publications in the world’s most prestigious scientific periodicals, acted as members of the most outstanding scientific bodies, attended meetings of professional forums and regularly lectured at universities of international reputation. This summary presents the most relevant accomplishments of our departments. 

Significant results of the year from domestic or international perspective:

• It was our institute that hosted the General Assembly of the Imeko international scientific organisation Imeko;
• We have founded the Industry 4.0 Hungarian Technological Platform that held two plenary session sin 2016;
• We celebrated with an extensive media campaign the 25th anniversary of the first Hungarian web address „sztaki.hu”;
• We participated with great success in the high-profile EU Horizon2020 Teaming Call the result of which was published in Brussels;
• A researcher of SZTAKI has won support from the Consolidator Grant programme announced by the European Research Council (ERC);
• The Otto Hutter Prize founded to acknowledge each year outstanding achievements in the development, application and dissemination of the eLearning methodology was awarded for the 11th time to a researcher of SZTAKI; 
• The RobustPlaNet EU FP7 project, coordinated by SZTAKI was successfully concluded;
• Our Institute acted as co-organisator of the ECCO 2016 Conference on the topics of combinatorial optimization;
• The 66th General Assembly of the  International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) held in Portugal has elected two colleagues of ours to an officer position;
• SZTAKI was represented by a large team of presenters on the Industry Days 2016;      
• In 2016 the company Bosch finished a 7 billion HUF value development project in the vehicle industry with SZTAKI participation in the investment;
• To foster the technological refurbishment of the Hungarian vehicle industry is the objective of building a new test track, agreed upon in a Declaration of Intent signed by Minister Mihály Varga from the Ministry of National Economy, managers of the participating research and development institutions and automotive companies, and also by the Director of SZTAKI;
• The 8th Hungarian Conference of Computer Graphics and Geometry was co-organised by the Institute;
• A new international cooperation agreement was signed in the frame of the EXCELL project with the aim of developing the research backup of production control and logistics;
• A cooperation  agreement was concluded with the BME and ELTE universities to facilitate the training of the future generation developers of self-propelled vehicles;
• The new generation mobile application software family GUIDE@HAND was distributed to a significant number of new users.

Our 2016 Initiatives regarding Social Commitment and Value Creation:

• The European Week of Robotics when we demonstrated our recent developments with robots to our young guests from kindergartens;
• The Digital Thematic Week when we received teachers and their pupils interested in an adventurous time journey in the realm of informatics;
• The European Campaign on Cyber-security when accomplished complex analytical and coordination tasks related to handling synchronised cross-border cyber-attacks;
• We held lectures on artificial intelligence, thinking machines and intelligent robots on the Feast of the Hungarian Science;  
• We provided support to the programs of the World Day of the Water, the Fall Festival of the Hungarian Museums and the Night of the Museums with our smart telephone applications;
• In summer we participated in organising a scientific camp for talented young people;  
• We held a vocational presentation to the pupils of the Hungarian Grammar School for the Education of Businessmen;
• A strategic cooperation contract was signed in order to popularise József Attila’s poetry
• We joined the Innovation Workshop that supports externally the Eötvös József  High School in Baja;
• We participated in organising the MOL Bubi data analysis competition; 
• Under the tutorship of SZTAKI researchers, nearly 10 of our students were ranked at the Students’ Scientific Conference, some others have obtained successfully their doctor title;
• We delivered lectures at the 2016 Drone Competition and Robotics Show;
• The developers of the smart phone application GUIDE@HAND Miskolc that can be downloaded free of charge and was awarded the Application of the Year 2016 have extended its presentation capabilities by spherical panorama pictures.

Internal events at SZTAKI:

• The new book edited by Zsuzsa Szentgyörgyi with the title:  ’Professor József Bokor who has united theory and practice’ was presented to the professional public;
• We had successfully organised again the Intitute’s Family Day;
• We had a commemorating meeting on Pál Michelberger;
• In December we received Santa Claus at the Institute to the great fun of the children of our staff
• We celebrated the 90th birthday of academician Tibor Vámos.

We endeavour to continue our research and develoment activity in 2017 on the same high level as before. We thank the support of our friends and partners and wish all of them a Happy and Successful New Year!