“Our grandchildren won’t even see it,” gloomily predicted the famous city-preservation TV program in the turn of the century. “We ourselves won’t even see it,” and this could well be the slogan of a modern small business in Sopron. But this is exceptionally good news: the biodegradable plastic bags they produce, made from biodegradable film, “disappear” in less than two months if composted properly. The development, supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, will do much to change the generation of plastic bags used in commerce and reduce the environmental pollution caused by packaging materials.

The new generation scaffolding system developed by Caadex Kft. is currently unrivalled on the market. Not only is it more stable and safer than other solutions, but its intelligent sensors can alert the user if the scaffold is not assembled correctly or if the structure needs maintenance or inspection. The “smart scaffolding” creates a much safer working environment in the construction industry than traditional solutions, and its costs are not significantly higher.

As a Hungarian enterprise, Gravity Research & Development Zrt. has been present on the global market for recommendation engines since 2010, helping service providers in a wide variety of industries both in Hungary and abroad. Under the brand names Yusp and Yuspify, they offer personalisation solutions based on cloud analytics to better understand and predict customer needs in providing online services. Funding from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund has helped the company to further develop its product range with new technologies to make it more attractive and competitive on this rapidly changing market.

Owing to their efficiency and environmental friendly technology, reverse osmosis-based water purification units have become indispensable elements of modern industrial water treatment technologies. The lifespan of these units, however, is not long enough, though it can be successfully extended through continual innovations. Hidrofilt Kft. also contributes to this objective with its project, which has earnt the company a HUF 400 million fund disbursed by the NRDI Office under the call for proposals “Support of business RDI activities” (VÁLLALATI KFI_16).

Modern medicine relies more and more on knowledge acquired in molecular biology and genetics. Therefore, the research into molecular markers revolutionising the diagnosis of diseases has also become extremely timely both for academic basic research and for pharmaceutical research. In order to harmonise the efforts of discovery research and industrial pharmaceutical developments, the Molecular Biomarker Research and Service Centre of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE Biotechnology HEICC) was established, about the goals and achievements of which, we interviewed Professor Imre Kacskovics, head of Department of Immunology of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE).

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.