TOP MANAGEMENT

Balázs Gulyás, President

Since 2012 Balázs Gulyás has been a Professor and President's Chair of Translational Neuroscience at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and the Director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Centre (CoNiC) of NTU. Prior to this appointment as one of the founding professors of LKCMedicine and the inaugural chair of the School’s neuroscience and mental health programme, he spent most of his scientific career at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, where he is still a Professor in the Section for Psychiatry, Division of Clinical Neuroscience.

He studied medicine at Semmelweis Medical University (MD: 1981), and parallel with it followed courses in physics at Eötvös Loránd University in his native Budapest. He studied philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium (BA and MA, 1982 and 1984) and obtained his PhD in Neurobiology at the same university in 1988. He pursued his postdoctoral studies at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology of the Karolinska Institute and at the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford.

During his career he participated in executive and leadership trainings at the universities of London, Oxford and the Harvard Business School. He also has a BD (divinity) from Heythrop College, University of London (2020), a CHEMS (mathematics) from The Open University, Milton Keynes (2022), and habilitations in medicine from KU Leuven (1988), the Karolinska Institute (1997) and the University of Debrecen (1999).

Earlier in his career he made some pioneering contributions to the fields of visual neuroscience and the functional mapping of the human brain with positron emission tomography (PET). Later on, his interest turned to molecular neuroimaging with PET, with special regard to neurological and psychiatric diseases and their “humanised” animal disease models. These activities also involved biomarker target identifications as well as drug and diagnostic imaging probe development studies. His recent interest covers, among others, the fields of neurology, psychiatry, basic and cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, in general, and more recently the neurobiological foundations of the human brain's extraordinary capacities, in particular.

Balázs Gulyás has published – as author or editor – fourteen books, authored some forty book chapters and 290+ research papers in peer reviewed scientific journals (source: Scopus and ORCID) and contributed to 7 patents. He is a member of, among others, Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe – where he is the Chair of the Section of Physiology and Neuroscience), the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Royal Belgian Academy of Medical Sciences and until his appointment as the President of HUN-REN effective 1 May 2023 he was a member of the Advanced Grants Panel of the European Research Council. Concurrent with his appointments at LKCMedicine in Singapore and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, he is an Honorary Professor at the Division of Brain Sciences, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London.

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Roland Jakab, Chief Executive Officer

He started his professional career in 2000, joining Ericsson Hungary Ltd., where he initially worked as a strategic business consultant, and later he was involved in developing and managing mobile banking and systems integration projects. After that, he was responsible for the sales of Multimedia products in Hungary and Macedonia. In 2008 he was appointed Director of Marketing and Communications and later Deputy Managing Director.

In 2013, he was appointed Managing Director of Ericsson Hungary Ltd., a company with 2,000 employees (1,600 of them R&D staff) and from 2018 he served as the Head of Strategy for the Central Europe region, covering eight countries. In his professional corporate activities, he has played a leading role in the introduction of several technological innovations (3G, 4G, 5G) and the dissemination of cutting-edge research and development (Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Edge Computing, Cloud Technology, XR) in Hungary, as well as strengthening the company's links with universities.

Currently he chairs several professional organisations:

President of the Artificial Intelligence Coalition – an Alliance of 420 organisations with more than 1000 experts, he took an active role in the development of Hungary's Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

Chairman of the Hungarian European Business Council (HEBC), which brings together the top executives of the Hungarian subsidiaries of 15 European industrial companies. Since 2013, he has led the preparation of HEBC's annual reports.

President of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hungary.

President of BME`s Supporters and Friends Association.

Founding Vice President of the Alliance for the Future Engineers, which comprises Hungary's leading industrial and technology corporations and promotes and supports the development of the engineering profession through a common determination and collective effort.

Board member of the 5G Coalition, in the establishment of which he played a crucial role.

Member of the Cooperative Doctoral Collegium

Member of the National Advisory Committee of National Laboratories.

From 2019 to 2023 he was a member of the National Science Policy Council.

From 2013 to 2018 he was the chairman of the Mobility and Multimedia Cluster (MMCluster), a cluster of 71 companies, which was established to bring together Hungarian players in mobile and multimedia technologies and the Hungarian R&D capacities and, based on these capacities, to introduce Hungarian inventions to the world market.

Between 2003 and 2013, he was a lecturer at the University of Debrecen.

He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and Political Science from the University of Debrecen, followed by postgraduate studies at Portland State University Oregon and Case Western Reserve University Ohio.

Prizes and Awards:

„Most Successful ICT Manager of the Year” – 2020. "His natural medium is the Artificial Intelligence, knows all about 5G and is a flag-carrier of digital transformation."

Neumann János Award – 2020.

Puskás Tivadar Award – 2013.