The statement of intent was signed by József Pálinkás, President of the NRDI Office last November and EMBL has already officially communicated Hungary’s full member status to all member states. EMBL is Europe’s leading intergovernmental research organisation in life sciences. Its headquarters and main laboratories are located in Heidelberg, Germany but it also operates several institutions in the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
Hungary became a prospect member in 2014 that allowed the Hungarian researcher community to access part of the cutting-edge international biomolecular infrastructure. The full membership was partly catalysed by the Hungarian Centre of Excellence for Molecular Medicine (HCEMM), one of the successful projects funded under the Teaming action of the Horizon 2020 programme (the main focus areas of the consortium include translational medicine, i.e. the clinical application of basic research findings, relating to cardiovascular and cancer diseases; learn more on this and the other centre of excellence here). The winning consortium entered into a formal partnership with EMBL, which however required the host country’s full membership in the organisation and this fact greatly speeded up Hungary’s accession to the European research organisation.
From 2017 on, we can benefit from EMBL as a full-fledged peer of the other 22 member states: our researchers have access to the entire infrastructure of the organisation in fields such as molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics; our young talents can participate in EMBL’s PhD and postdoctoral programmes and our industrial businesses have the opportunity to join the frontier technological development projects and research partnerships of EMBL.
In the first five years, Hungary is entitled to a discounted fee payable for the full membership, contributing approximately EUR 333,000 to the organisation in 2017, to be financed from the NRDI Fund.
As part of its statutory tasks, the NRDI Office represents Hungary’s government in RDI matters in international organisations. The NRDI Office aims to monitor the benefits of membership in various organisations on an annual basis, by looking into the R&D achievements in the specific disciplines versus the expenditure, and to ensure that the resulting public benefits are not only enjoyed by the beneficiaries but will also be demonstrated to the broader researcher community, the wide public and the decision-makers of science-funding.
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Further information and previous updates on Hungarian membership in international research infrastructures:
Sustainable development of research infrastructure
National Research Infrastructure Committee
The balance of international membership fees
Particle accelerator for the X-ray laser in Hamburg is operating
Hungary joins ELIXIR, the most extensive European infrastructure for life-science information
Envoy extraordinary for the international utilisation of the ELI laser research centre capacities in Szeged
V4 cooperation to jointly utilise research infrastructure and promote the expert evaluation of programmes
Significant Hungarian R&D export to the European Spallation Source