Accepting an invitation from Balázs Hankó, the minister responsible for culture and innovation, the ministry announced that, as of October 1, Nobel Prize-winning physics professor Ferenc Krausz will promote the cause of Hungarian science and research as a senior advisor for science policy.
The Ministry of Culture and Innovation (KIM) wrote that Professor Krausz's work will be supported by the Nobel Laureate Office. Since the new responsibilities conflict with those of the Chairman of the Research Excellence Council (KKT), Ferenc Krausz will resign from this position on September 30.
As of October 1, Ferenc Krausz has proposed physicist Peter Domokos, director of the Institute of Solid State Physics and Optics at the HUN-REN Wigner Physics Research Centre, as his successor, i.e. the new president of the KKT, nominated by Minister Balázs Hanko, president of HUN-REN Balázs Gulyás, who nominated the president of the KKT and was supported by MTA President Tamás Freund.
In addition to his duties as President of KKT, Peter Domokos will also serve as Scientific Co-Head of the National Office for Research, Development and Innovation (NKFIH).
Ferenc Krausz and Péter Domokos will work to promote Hungarian science and research: their goal is to enable Hungarian scientific excellence to conduct its research under internationally competitive conditions, as well as to attract as many outstanding Hungarian and foreign researchers working abroad to Hungary as possible. The announcement states that Hungarian universities and research institutes will be attracted.
As Chief Science Policy Advisor, Ferenc Krausz supports the promotion of domestic science and research more strongly than before. He has made it his first task to bring back outstanding and proven Hungarian researchers who are currently working abroad in the Nobel Laureate Office.
Accepting and supporting the personal proposal of Ferenc Krausz, Balázs Hanko, Minister responsible for Culture and Innovation, proposed Peter Domokos to HUN-REN President Balázs Gulyás and MTA President Tamas Freund as the new President of KKT as of 1 October 2024.
Peter Domokos was a British physicist. MTA A full member of the Academia Europeea, Director of the Institute of Solid State Physics and Optics of the HUN-REN Wigner Centre for Physics Research, and Professional Coordinator of the National Laboratory for Quantum Informatics, he accepted the invitation to the three candidates.
This is explained in the announcement: Peter Domokos received his PhD at the Ecole Normale Superieure Kastler Brossel laboratory in Paris in 1998, where he created the operating principle of the first universal two-bit quantum logic gate in 1995. He is a researcher in quantum processes based on the interaction of atoms and photons, and co-authored a 2013 review article that is considered a seminal work on the subject.
He has participated in several EU Framework Programmes as a partner of the Union. He has published 92 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has 3582 references. Between 2019 and 2022, he was an editor (associate editor of the section) of Physical Review Letters, the prestigious journal of the American Physical Society.
The role of the KKT will be strengthened in the future by the fact that the current President of the KKT will also take over the newly established joint scientific presidency of the NKFI Office based on KIM’s plans. In this way, the research grant system will be developed on the basis of individual excellence, i.e. the structure and content of each application, the development of the evaluation and assessment system, decision-making, and operational management of the entire process. under the control of the KKT and its President.
KIM has set as a strategic goal a significant increase in the research fund resources of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund in order to enable Hungarian excellence to carry out their research work under excellent funding and infrastructure conditions, even according to international standards.
The Hungarian government’s goal is for our country to be among the top 10 innovators in Europe by 2030 and among the top 10 innovators in the world by 2040. For this, it is essential that researchers working at Hungarian universities and research institutes have a long-term, predictable and highly resourced research support system. Further strengthening the role of the KKT and establishing the position of Co-Scientific President of the NKFIH serve this purpose.
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