"Anyone who wants to play it safe shouldn't enter this race" — Zsolt Fülöp stated on the occasion of his EPS (European Physical Society) Fellowship

— What exactly is the EPS Fellowship you've just received, and what should we know about the society that awarded it?

— The European Physical Society, or EPS, founded in 1968,  is essentially the umbrella organisation for the national physical societies of European countries and for professionals working in physics —not only researchers, but physics teachers too.

Fellows are chosen on the basis of international nominations. Under the EPS statutes, Fellows can make up no more than 5% of the membership, and this year only two were elected from Hungary. The Fellowship now numbers around a hundred members in total. Therefore it is significant honour to be both nominated and elected though it doesn't come with any additional rights or obligations.

— The call for nominations states that excelling in physics at a high level isn't enough on its own; candidates also need a substantial track record in international science organisation and diplomacy. What do you think the selection committee took into account in your case?

— Two things probably worked in my favour. One is that I served for several years as President of the EPS's Nuclear Physics Division, and was actively involved in the Society's work both before and after that term. The other — and this was perhaps the more important factor — is that I organised the first two international conferences in Debrecen that launched a new topic within my own field of nuclear astrophysics. This has now became a biennial European touring conference series under the EPS's auspices, moving from country to country across Europe; this autumn the 13^th edition will be held in Cluj-Napoca. That's precisely the area where my scientific work and my international science-organisation work came together.

— What does it take for a Hungarian researcher to become an influential figure in international science?

— The absolute starting point is high-quality scientific work — an impressive publication record, the kind that people actually read and cite. After that comes attitude: you shouldn't just work away in your own lab, stay in your own disciplinary silo, but should also contribute something to the professional community, whether that's your institution or your field, whether narrowly or broadly defined.  Activities include mentoring younger researchers, and involvement in public engagement. To mention just one example: Science on Stage, which is also supported by the EPS, is a unique European competition for teachers of science in primary and secondary schools, where hundreds of teachers demonstrate how to get students excited about science. We managed to bring this event to Hungary too, and as hosts we were able to enter ten times as many Hungarian teachers in that year's competition compared to previous years.

All of this, of course, demands a great deal of time and energy, often at the expense of one's own research — but that's simply the price you have to be willing to make. It would obviously help if popularising science counted for more in how scientific work is evaluated, and I am pleased to see that there are now initiatives working towards that.

— In recent years ATOMKI has managed to build up some serious research infrastructure, and it also plays a major role in infrastructure development at national level. What has ATOMKI done differently from other Hungarian research institutions?

— Experimental physics has always been an instrument- and equipment-intensive discipline, but nowadays it's almost the same story in every field: a modern equipment base and access to the right infrastructure decide who stays competitive. However,  no instrument, however expensive, is enough on its own — you also need to know how to operate it, and, crucially, you need to know its limits: what it can and can't be used for. ATOMKI has built up significant infrastructure over the past few decades, but alongside that we've also built up the necessary know-how. We're good at negotiating with suppliers, and we don't buy into grand promises. That pays off, because some suppliers now regard us as a reference laboratory and consult us when developing new equipment.

At ATOMKI we don't just use  our infrastructure in our own narrow field — we make it available to other disciplines too. Archaeology is a good example, or more precisely archaeometry: the joint Isotoptech–ATOMKI AMS laboratory is the only place in the country where carbon-14 radiocarbon dating can be carried out on samples containing less than 1 mg of carbon, and we also help with a range of other analyses. ATOMKI staff have also done excellent work establishing how far you can go with technical examinations or treatments before an artefact is damaged. It's no accident that a professor from the University of Arizona, an expert in carbon-14 dating, chose ATOMKI as his European research base — because he can carry out his work with us effectively here.

— Am I right in thinking that, ideally, a modern instrument base shouldn't only serve the scientists of the institution or country that owns it?

— That shouldn't be the ideal case — it should be the default. State-of-the-art instrumentation, combined with the expertise to use it, has real international appeal. Here at ATOMKI we operate some of the best  equipment in Europe, for which EU-funded access schemes exist, so foreign researchers often come to work with us. We're part of several international consortia, for instance, E-RIHS ERIC, whose members include, major European museums. As an interesting aside: the Louvre operates its own particle accelerator for artefact analysis inside the museum building itself, because it holds so many pieces that it wouldn't be advisable to move out. Yet non-destructive measurements using a particle accelerator, of the kind used to determine an artefact's origin, are indispensable to them.

— It could be in every institution's interest to have the best possible instruments. How do you avoid building up unnecessary capacity and wasting money?

— There are several ways to approach this. At European level there's a committee called ESFRI — the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures — which coordinates the development of the most expensive, billion-euro large-scale facilities. ELI, the large-scale laser facility in Szeged, is exactly this kind of project: it was designed from the outset to be used by the best researchers not just from all over Europe, but from around the world. The owners of smaller facilities and instruments also often organise themselves into European networks, sharing development costs and coordinating their work to avoid duplication.

In Hungary  we are following a similar principle within the infrastructure committee operating under NKFIH, which I chair. We've put together a national Top 100 list of research infrastructures,  only open-access infrastructures can be included on it — meaning facilities that others can also use, or that are organised into collaborative networks. This sometimes clashes with a "my own castle" mentality, but in the long run I believe it's the right strategy, and it's also in line with European science policy.

— Where does Hungarian research infrastructure currently stand by international comparison?

— We're making progress, that's a fact — but the rest of the world is moving too, so closing the gap is the real challenge. My view is that the key is not to copy what already exists elsewhere, but to build niche infrastructure that doesn't exist anywhere else. The ELI laser centre is the best example of this: it currently has no equal anywhere in the world, and alongside European researchers, many of its users are from a different continent, and even Australian researchers have applied for beamtime at ELI. It's not surprising when Hungarian researchers travel to the US to run experiments bur now it's happening the other way round. It's been proven that if you have a world-class infrastructure, you can use it to establish a global presence.

The other key is a full-service approach. We don't simply hand over the equipment for use — we also offer our expertise in designing the experiments and evaluating the results. That's a genuine win-win: the visiting researcher ends up with more robust scientific results, and our researchers become co-authors on the resulting papers. A great recent example is the work performed  by a Danish research group from Aarhus university and ATOMKI's Space Chemistry Research Group and recently published in Nature Astronomy, for which all the irradiation measurements were carried out at ATOMKI's accelerators, using the equipment of the Space Chemistry Laboratory. The Danish researchers have since cited ATOMKI and its Space Chemistry Laboratory as a positive example in every forum they speak at. That's the best kind of advertising, because it's better to be praised by others than to praise yourself.

— Is progress simply a matter of money, or is it also about mindset?

— Money matters, of course, since equipment has to be bought — but mindset is at least as important. The key thing is that an institute should want to measure itself against the international scientific market, not just the domestic one — a bit like how a startup can't get by on the domestic market alone. Setting yourself up to compete internationally is   a bigger risk, since you can take some serious knocks, but the potential rewards are bigger too. Anyone who wants to play it safe shouldn't enter this race.

— And how optimistic are you about the future of Hungary's research infrastructure?

— I usually say I'm almost hopelessly optimistic. I believe Hungary can find the right balance between developing infrastructure and actually using it. As I said, the equipment alone isn't enough — you also need to build up the expertise required to use it, which is sometimes almost harder than raising the money to buy the device in the first place. We're actually in a fairly good position on that front right now, but we absolutely have to protect the pool of researchers  who develop and maintain such infrastructure. Research infrastructure means nothing without excellent researchers to run it.

I see real potential in HUN-REN operating critical infrastructure that serves not just its own institutes, but the whole of the Hungarian scientific and innovation community — including, importantly, universities and innovative businesses. If university students can work in genuinely modern laboratory environments as part of joint programmes, that's good for everyone: HUN-REN provides the technological backbone, and the universities provide the knowledge and the next generation of researchers. I think that would be a genuinely promising vision for attracting foreign researchers too.