Artificial Intelligence Is the Key to Competitiveness: HUN-REN’s Two-Day Event Sets the Direction for the Future of Research

He added that HUN-REN is working to ensure Hungary becomes one of Europe’s top 10 innovators by 2030.

The CEO of HUN-REN emphasized that today’s scientific work is no longer limited by a lack of information or tools. In many fields, researchers now have more data than they can meaningfully align or interpret. The real constraint is the lack of integration: fragmented workflows and scientific disciplines that operate in isolation from one another.

The central theme of the 2026 hackathon is Agentic Discovery. To help participants explore the field more deeply and gain hands-on experience, the organizers are providing access to the ADP AI-Scientist platform, which contestants can use freely throughout the event. The platform integrates hundreds of interoperating AI-driven tools that cover the full spectrum of the research process - from generating ideas to publishing results - all within an ethical and transparent framework.

The hackathon serves as an experimental space for exploring how agentic AI can become a credible and effective part of scientific research. The event places particular emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration and on developing solutions that can be genuinely applied in real-world research practice.

The aim of the event is to bring AI specialists and researchers from different scientific fields together to develop agentic AI–based research concepts and workflows through collaborative work. At the end of the hackathon, each team will present its results in a five-minute showcase.

The submitted solutions will be evaluated by a distinguished professional jury chaired by Roland Jakab, CEO of HUN-REN. The jury also includes András Benczúr, Head of the Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory at HUN-REN SZTAKI; Dr. Zsolt Szalay, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Automotive Technologies at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics; and Dr. Gábor Kertész, Deputy Dean of the John von Neumann Faculty of Informatics at Óbuda University.

The top three teams will be invited to the HUN-REN AI Symposium 2026, and the members of the winning team will also have the opportunity to attend a major international professional event, the Helmholtz AI Conference.

Breakthrough moment, new horizons for research

The mid-January hackathon fits into HUN-REN’s broader strategic vision of approaching artificial intelligence not merely as a practical tool, but as a research infrastructure capable of reshaping scientific thinking and collaboration. In the long term, the Research Network aims to make AI an active, integrated co-researcher in scientific work.