The twelve-member National Science Policy Council was established in May 2023 and serves as a strategic advisory body to the government in the area of science and innovation policy.
Then, in July, a new steering council of the Hungarian Research Network (HUN-REN) was established, now with nine members, and whose primary mission is to raise the network of research institutes and position it into an international powerhouse, the announcement said.
In order to distribute research resources efficiently, the newly established Research Excellence Council fulfills the Hungarian science policy management system and will also be tasked with developing a system of excellence-based research grants.
Among the members of the new council will be Ferenc Krauss, a Nobel Prize winner for his research on attosecond light pulses.
The HUN-REN Board of Directors and members of the Research Excellence Council were invited and appointed by Minister János Škák in consultation with MTA President Tamas Freund. He will be a member of the seven-member board of directors
- Petra Akzel, social scientist,
- Istvan Greiner, R&D Manager at Richter Nyrt.
- Plant biologist Eva Kondorossi,
- Ferenc Krausz, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
- Biochemist Andras Persel,
- Mathematician Gergely Rust
- And Gabor Stepan, who works in the field of technical sciences.
The Research Excellence Council will be the first guardian of the development of the unified excellence-based career model proposed by Professor Ferenc Kraus.
“The government’s goal is for Hungary to be among the top 25 innovators in the world and among the top 10 innovators in Europe by 2030, and to increase the current number of around six thousand researchers per million Hungarian citizens to nine thousand by the end of the decade,” the Ministry of Culture and Innovation announced.
