Hungarian Science Gains New Momentum: HUN-REN and BME Sign Joint Action Plan

At the heart of the joint action plan lies the principle of symbiosis: leveraging the complementary strengths of two institutions with distinguished scientific traditions to achieve outstanding shared results. To this end, the parties will share resources, support dual institutional affiliations, and launch joint doctoral programs, grant applications, and research projects to provide an internationally competitive environment for students and junior researchers. A key focus of the collaboration is the strengthening of doctoral programmes and emerging researcher pipeline. The structured involvement of HUN-REN researchers in BME’s doctoral schools, joint supervision arrangements, and a coordinated scholarship system are all designed to make Hungary—and specifically BME and HUN-REN—attractive research destinations for both domestic and international talent.

“This cooperation marks a milestone in the history of both institutions. Our relationship spans many years, and we are now broadening our joint efforts and elevating it to a new level. This is more than a partnership: it is Hungary’s national interest that key actors in research and higher education join forces. There are numerous overlapping areas between our institutions, and our goal is to open our infrastructural capacities to one another and ensure that HUN-REN’s outstanding research competences are even more strongly integrated into the daily life and educational activities of the university,” emphasized Charaf Hassan, Rector of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

“The cooperation between our institutions is based on the recognition that scientific excellence today can only thrive through alliances, not in isolation. The coordinated operation of two strong knowledge centres can create genuine international competitiveness and make a scientific career more attractive for our young researchers,” stressed Balázs Gulyás, President of the HUN-REN Hungarian Research Network. He added that future progress in research, innovation, and education requires value chain–based thinking that places the application and practical utilization of scientific discoveries at its core. The parties are entering into a partnership of ideas and shared risk, aiming not to follow but to shape international trends. The collaboration seeks to serve as a model for the entire Hungarian research and innovation ecosystem, recognizing that meaningful progress can only be achieved if academia and the scientific community work together to generate tangible social and economic value.

Gergely Zaránd, Vice-Rector for Scientific Affairs at BME, noted: “We have come a long way, and it is clear that excellence is the common thread between our institutions. We collaborate across numerous fields, as demonstrated by the more than 350 joint publications produced in recent years. We are now entering a new, operational phase of the cooperation: the ideas and plans formulated in the previous period are becoming reality. The development of the action plan was preceded by thorough preparatory work, and it is particularly encouraging that the invited researchers almost immediately committed to joint efforts. Our next task is to translate these plans into tangible results through consistent and dedicated work.”

Roland Jakab, CEO of HUN-REN, highlighted: “This action plan is built on a solid operational model: we work with shared resources, shared responsibility, and shared standards to achieve greater impact together in research performance, talent development, and innovation.” He added that progress under the new model will be measured using quantified indicators with clearly defined baseline and target values. The objective is not strategic cooperation for its own sake, but to prove that Hungary can retain its talent, attract back outstanding researchers, and advance in international competition.

The joint research initiatives will focus on strategic areas including artificial intelligence and big data analytics, energy, biotechnology, and sustainable materials and technologies. The parties will establish interdisciplinary joint research centers and inter-institutional research groups, while placing strong emphasis on the efficient utilization of outstanding research infrastructure—among them BME’s training reactor and the reactor of the HUN-REN Centre for Energy Research.

The action plan also encompasses the establishment of joint scholarships, the participation of HUN-REN researchers in curricular activities, the joint promotion of intellectual property commercialization, and the support of researcher mobility, thereby further strengthening knowledge transfer between the institutions.

HUN-REN and BME aim for their collaboration not only to serve as an example at the institutional level, but also to deliver measurable results that enhance the international visibility of Hungarian scientific excellence and boost the country’s innovation performance.