The fifth Strategy Report and Roadmap 2018 of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures was presented on 11th September, in the framework of the Austrian Presidency events in Vienna.

Professor László Gránásy and his team are engaged in modelling the formation of polycrystalline materials, a research they were granted funds for early in 2018 under the “Frontline” – Excellence Programme developed by the NRDI Office. The goal, after having fully understood the crystallisation process, is to use the results in biological systems.

The ecological footprint of urban areas and their environs is growing in a faster pace than that of rural areas and that represents a heavy environmental load. The colleagues in the consortium led by the Geographical Institute of the Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences (RCAES) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), including researchers and industrial players alike, are studying the number and the commuting patterns of the population in the Budapest metropolitan region, as well as certain hormonal substances of municipal wastewater emitted to the environment.

Neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, represent a heavy burden on the quality of life of patients going through mental and physical deterioration, the everyday life of their families as well as on societies losing valuable workforces. Numerous research organisations and innovative enterprises are engaged in finding an effective treatments for this currently incurable disease.

In the 21st century space-related activities are predominantly linked to space agencies set up as a result of national or international cooperation, therefore, a private company becoming competitive in space industry innovation is a remarkable achievement. C3S LLC. has already proved its worthiness by building the first Hungarian satellite called Masat-1. Now they would like to establish themselves on the European space industry market with the help of the NRDI Office’s scheme called Support of business RDI activities.

António Campinos took up office as the President of the European Patent Office (EPO), an international organisation with 38 member states, on 1 July 2018. With nearly 7 000 staff, he leads one of the largest public service institutions in Europe.

Hungarian Embassy in Tel-Aviv is organising a project preparation event on the recently announced 6th call for proposal for joint R&D projects (2018) within the framework of the Hungarian-Israeli bilateral cooperation.

Industrial activities often cause the contamination of environment - the air, the soil and natural waters are also affected. The remediation process can be successful with innovations and conscious planning as we have to meet environmental, economic and social requirements at the same time. Imsys Ltd. has been operating for twenty-five years in the area of environmental consultancy, planning and remediation. New development project aiming at microbial degrading systems have recently been launched with the help of funding granted by the NRDI Office.

One of the funding schemes of the Competitive Central-Hungary Operational Programme (VEKOP) fosters a specific stage of innovation which is often difficult to finance from the market: prototype development. Prototype does not necessarily refer to a physical product, as for instance, an IT process can also be at this stage of development. This was the case with StreamNovation Szoftverfejlesztő Ltd., one of the winners of the latest call, whose project, if successful, can lay new foundations for pharmaceutical research.

After 2017, Wessling Hungary Ltd measured the amount of microplastic particles in the Tisza River and Tisza Lake again this year and found levels of contamination similar to that of waters abroad. The company won more than HUF 138 million in funding for the development of sampling methods under the NRDI Office’s “Support of business RDI activities” call.

BHE Bonn Hungary Ltd, a company fully owned by Hungarians, delivers equipment enabling high frequency communication in many parts of the world. The company’s devices ensure stable communication for disaster management and law enforcement organisations, and its technology provides the infrastructure for seamless wireless communication in dozens of tunnels in Western Europe.

With the support of the European Commission’s Translational Services and ALLEA Member Academies, a new set of translations of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity were published in June 2018. The new available translations include Hungarian. The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity serves the European research community as a framework for self-regulation across all scientific and scholarly disciplines and for all research settings.

A UK User Consultation Meeting took place in London at the Royal Society on 11th June where the members of the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) consortium (the Czech, Romanian and Hungarian laser centres,) provided up to date information on the proposed operation of the laser facilities to the UK user community.

AITIA is a small business and yet a global brand: their solutions are used by large market leading companies, although they develop internal network systems, so the broader public knows less about them. They have contributed to every level of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the successful projects triggered an avalanche of success and interest.

The Centre for University-Industry Cooperation (FIEK with Hungarian abbreviation) was established last year at the BME (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) based on the outcomes of cooperation between industry and academia throughout several decades. The aim of the organisation is to coordinate the professional competences of the university and find solutions to complex industrial problems. In several cases, more than one faculty is required to solve a problem and it is also beneficial for industrial partners to share their complex tasks with the specialists of several areas. The centre has just started its operation but its benefits are already tangible. They will also cater for market needs to an increasing extent.

One of the winners in the first round of the call announced by the NRDI Office in 2017 for thematic applications initiated by young researchers, was Andrea Fekete, assistant lecturer at the 1st Department of Paediatrics of Semmelweis University, who formerly set up her diabetes research group funded by the Momentum (Lendület) Programme. With her similarly young colleagues, she is working on developing a new pharmaceutical drug and an organ preservation solution to be used for kidney transplantation but they also serve medicine by trying to understand the effects of medications and the extension of their use. A start-up she launched with Ádám Vannay may bring significant commercial benefits.

A breakthrough has been made in evolutionary medicine and the research of personalised immune responses by Csaba Pál, Bolyai Prize-winning biologist, head of the Evolutionary Systems Biology Group at the Biological Research Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged. His project was funded in the Frontline programme of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDI Office).