Ferenc Krausz - source: MTI

It was recalled that in May this year the new twelve-member National Science Policy Council was established as the Government’s strategic advisory body in the field of science policy and innovation, and that in July the new Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN) was established, a new nine-member governing body, whose primary task is to raise the profile of the network of research institutes and place it in the international arena, and now the Research Council has been established to ensure the efficient allocation of research resources, thus completing the governance system of Hungarian science policy.

The council will also be responsible for the development of a system of excellence-based research funding, in order to create an attractive and predictable research career in Hungary that focuses on international excellence, they said. The Ministry added that they consider it of strategic importance that both the members of the HUN-REN Governing Board and the members of the Research Council were invited and appointed by Minister János Csák in consultation with the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA), Tamás Freund, in a consensual manner.

According to the Ministry’s statement, the seven-member panel will include social scientist Petra Aczél, István Greiner, Director of Research and Development at Richter Plc, plant biologist Éva Kondorosi, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ferenc Krausz, biochemist András Perczel, mathematician Gergely Röst and Gábor Stépán, who works in the field of engineering. The Research Council will be the first custodian of the unified, excellence-based research career model proposed by Professor Ferenc Krausz, the Ministry wrote.

The Government’s goal is that by 2030 Hungary should be among the world’s top 25 and Europe’s top 10 innovator countries, and the number of researchers should increase from the current 6,000 per one million Hungarian inhabitants to 9,000 by the end of the decade, the KIM pointed out in the statement.

Source: MTI