Hungarian and international RDI news

The Hungarian Association for Innovation announced again the Scientific and Innovation Talent Recruitment Contest for Youth. The contest of young inventors is funded by the Ministry of Human Capacities and the National Research, Development and Innovation Office.

The European Commission has launched the fifth edition of the EU Prize for Women Innovators to award women entrepreneurs who have achieved outstanding innovations and brought them to market.

The Central European Business Forum as part of Victoria’s Small Business Festival in Melbourne hosted the Smart Hungary exhibition compiled by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office. Visitors to the festival agreed that these installations, made of recycled cardboard by an innovative Hungarian SME, truly testified to Hungary’s past scientific achievements and like-minded innovations of the present.

BioTalentum Kft. was among the first winners under the EU_KP_16 call aimed to widen Hungarian participation in the EU H2020 and other European and regional funding programmes. The domestic funding of HUF 3 million (EUR 10,000) granted by the NRDI Fund enabled the company to organise an international consortium of eight members for a nanotechnology project. Their ambition has recently been fulfilled: the consortium’s “iNanoBIT” project has made it through the two-round professional assessment and garnered nearly EUR 7 million (HUF 2.17 billion) in funding from the Horizon 2020 programme.

József Pálinkás and Klement Tockner, President of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), agreed on further publication of joint calls for research proposals in Vienna on July 14.

On behalf of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Science|Business invites you to take a survey regarding the importance and future of European research and innovation.

The world’s largest X-ray laser, the European XFEL, has now entered its operation phase.

At its 53rd meeting yesterday, EMBL Council selected Edith Heard as the organisation’s fifth Director General. Heard’s mandate is scheduled to begin 1 January 2019. Hungary has recently become a full member state in Europe’s leading laboratory for the life sciences.

After visiting seven Hungarian university towns and London, the roadshow of the Startup Campus launched with the support of the NRDI Office was finished in Berlin. In his opening presentation at the event, József Pálinkás, President of the NRDI Office highlighted the development achievements of the domestic innovation ecosystem and also told about the concept of the Campus Budapest multifunctional community centre to be launched at the Millenáris area, Budapest.

In 2016, more than HUF 3 billion (EUR 10.5 million) was allocated by the NRDI Office to cover the costs of participation in large research infrastructures, including the investment of EUR 2.2 million for the ongoing project of the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (European XFEL). Two Hungarian research teams at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences are eager to become one of the first users of the facility.

The AAL Call 2017 is now open for project proposals aimed at the innovative integration of existing ICT solutions or the development of new ones to support the ambient assisted living of the older adults. Representatives of the joint financed programme, from the European Commission and the participating countries including Hungary, held a two-day meeting on 9–10 April at the NRDI Office in Budapest, on the financial and coordination tasks of this year’s call and further directions of the programme.

Paris, 16 March 2017, Thursday (MTI) – France already backs Hungary but further efforts are necessary in the following period to make the entire Hungarian R&D sector and the ELI laser centre in Szeged a success story – said József Pálinkás, President of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NRDI Office) this Thursday after meeting the representatives of the French scientific community in Paris.

The grant agreements with the representatives of the 10 winning Horizon 2020 Teaming projects, including two led by Hungarian researchers, were ceremonially signed on 16 February 2017 in Brussels. The event was attended by József Pálinkás, President of the NRDI Office, the institution responsible for coordinating the successful application of the EPIC and HCEMMM projects aimed at creating Hungarian centres of excellence in the fields of production informatics and control and medical research.

Post-communist central and eastern Europe still lags western Europe on the quality of its science and innovation outputs, according to six indicators collected by the European Commission. The gap may be persistent, but it does not appear to be widening. Investors are beginning to uncover more and more opportunities in CEE and east-west venture capital investment rates seem to be converging.

The projects "Danube-INCO.NET", "JPI Urban Europe" and "EXPAND" are organising a joint workshop aiming at widening the participation in the JPI Urban Europe, exchanging on urban challenges and to matching JPI Urban Europe with the national and regional funding strategies and priorities of Danube Region as well as EU-Widening countries on 24 March 2017.

Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, handed over a €1 million Horizon Prize for Better Use of Antibiotics, and Vytenis Andriukaitis, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, delivered the EU Health Award for NGOs fighting Antimicrobial Resistance, at an award ceremony hosted by the University of Leuven in Belgium.

The European Commission and the European Investment Fund (EIF) have started selecting promoters of one or more private-sector led, market-driven Pan-European Venture Capital Funds-of-Funds. 17 applications were submitted by the 31 January 2017 deadline

Nuclear scientists have become the first to face up to the hard realities of what Brexit means for UK/EU research cooperation - and their future careers - following the announcement that Britain is to pull out of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) when it leaves the EU.

RIs are of utmost importance for Europe’s global competitiveness. Science Europe has published its contribution to the review of the positioning of Research Infrastructures (RIs) in Horizon 2020 and in future Framework Programmes.

Paul Nurse, geneticist who received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Director of the UK’s Francis Crick Institute, will be joining the EU’s Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) in March.