Centres of Excellence in Hungary

Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence in Information Technology, Computer Science and Control Proposal number: ICA1-1999-70100, Acronym: HUN-TING http://www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/coe/

Leadership

Director: Dr. Péter Inzelt, Deputy Directors, Research: Dr. József Bokor, Dr. László Monostori

Supervisory Board: T. Vámos (President, inf. sci.), S. Csibi (inf. sci.), L. Lovász (math., comp. sci.), P. Michelberger (mechanics & transport), D. Szász (math.), V. T. Soós (math.), R. Tuschák (control sci.), all full members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Scientific Board: T. Roska (President, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Structure

The R&D activities of the Institute with about 310 full time employees and more than 40 Ph.D. students, are run in research laboratories and groups. All units in this flat structure operate as individual centres, financing their expenses from their revenues. Basic research is supported through an internal grant system applicable for intervals of maximum three years.

Research fields

The philosophy of the Centre supports basically multidisciplinary approaches to set up its research activity. The main disciplines followed by the research groups are as follows:
- Computer science (symbolic computations, databases, algorithms);
- Information technology: wide area and local networks, WWW, multimedia, and digital libraries;
- Parallel and distributed computer systems;
- Applied mathematics: graph theory, financial mathematics, statistics;
- Operations research and decision support systems;
- Design and implementation of analogical (Cellular Nonlinear Networks) algorithms;
- System science, signal processing: dynamic systems, identification, fault detection, robust control;
- Artificial intelligence, intelligent manufacturing and business processes, production informatics.

Recent achievements, future goals

In 1999 supercomputer performance (10¹² operations by second on a single chip) was achieved by a single analogic visual microprocessor made jointly with a research team in Seville. It has been demonstrated at an international technology assessment meeting organised by the US Office of Naval Research in Budapest. The new chip serves as a camera and computer at the same time (http://lab.analogic.sztaki.hu).

Our contribution to the reconstruction process at the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Paks, Hungary can be regarded as a success story, as well. Siemens, the NPP and the SZTAKI were working on the modernisation and refurbishment of the complete reactor protection system (RPS) of NPP Paks. By August 1999 the refurbishment of the 1^st unit was successfully completed. Co-operating with the Technical University of Budapest, the SZTAKI participates in the development of intelligent vehicle control systems for KNORR BREMSE Ltd. A successful prototype has been developed to avoid unintentional lane departure of trucks by using vision systems in the control loop (www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/ake/systems).

In the fields of CAD/CAM, production informatics, intelligent manufacturing & business processes, the Institute cultivates an extremely broad network of international co-operation, which has been manifested in numerous successful research projects (www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/ake/cim, www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/ake/geomod, http://holonic.ailab.sztaki.hu).

The main future tendencies of the Institute are as follows:
- to be the official independent advisor of the government in the field of nation-wide development strategy of information technology and communication,
- to form a chain in knowledge and technology transfer between Hungary and the developed countries, between research and economy, between science and higher education,
- to strengthen the multidisciplinary character of research projects, the connections between information science and medicine, microbiology, sociology, economy and environmental protection.

Socio-economic aspects

During its more than three decades of existence, the SZTAKI has been the leading research institute in the field of information technology and networking in Hungary, with numerous important links with the economic and social environment:
- problem solving, consulting, system integration based on the results of basic and applied research,
- participation in graduate and post-graduate education (common chairs and Ph.D. programmes with all significant universities in Hungary),
- participation of Ph.D. and graduate students in research,
- managing the nation-wide computer network for "academic" institutions, creating new contents, services and consulting the users,
- organisation of special courses and trainings.

International links, co-operation partners

Numerous members of the Institute are represented in prestigious international scientific boards and committees as CIRP, IEEE, IFAC, IFIP. ERCIM (European Research Consortium of Informatics and Mathematics) granted full membership to the SZTAKI in 1994.

As to international research projects, we participate or recently participated in, the application showed up to 31 projects supported by the EU in some way (9 ESPRIT, 11 COPENICUS, 5 INCO-COPERNICUS, 2 TEMPUS, 2 COST, and 2 PHARE projects). The list of other international projects with 30 items, incorporated, among other things, the US Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, US Army Research Office (ARO). Since its start the Institute has participated in 4 successful proposals within the V. Framework Programme of the EU.

Structure of the proposed Work Packages

The workplan structure of the SZTAKI's application (HUN-TING) has been designed to match the main objectives of the proposal, and the diversity of the Institute's activity in the field of Information Technologies, Computer Science and Control. Figure 1 represents the structure of Work Packages.

Figure 1: Structure of HUN-TING Workplan by Work Packages

Potential co-operating partners are welcome to contact the Institute:

Address: MTA SZTAKI, Kende u. 13-17, H-1111, Budapest, Phone: (+36 1) 2796000, Fax: (+36 1) 4665 703.

URL: http://www.sztaki.hu/, e-mail: inzelt@sztaki.hu, pr@sztaki.hu, haidegger@sztaki.hu