About the Institute (earlier introduction)

The application activity is concentrated mainly on complex systems, the turn-key tasks from system planning to realization, furthermore the training of the personnel in cases when the complex interdisciplinary knowledge, possibility of organizing specialized teams, the good infrastructure and financial stability of the Institute mean competitive advantages compared with small- and medium size enterprises.

The Institute's mission includes the transfer of up-to-date results and research technology to university students. The Institute is very active in graduate and post-graduate education, cooperating with most of technical universities in Hungary and operating common chairs, post-graduate programmes with them. More than 40 colleagues conduct regularly lectures on graduate and post-graduate levels, and senior researchers hold part-time position as university professors. About 50 Ph.D. students and 30-40 graduate students participate in the work of the Institute.
 

All units at the Institute are operating as individual profit centers, the basic research activity is financed from budget subsidy and from a part of contract work's profit. Colleagues who are willing to deal with basic research in the next period may apply for grants of maximum 3-years. The laboratories for basic research ensure:

• the internal and international goodwill of the Institute as a high-tech organization of high level,
• the new results, methods, technologies which provide competitive advantages for us in the field of consulting, system planning and integration,
• highly qualified young researchers through personal contacts with best students during university years.

The Institute's research and development activity aims primarily at creating custom-designed computer-based applications, implementing the related software and providing turn-key systems. Our scientists and engineers have the necessary field-specific expertise (theoretical, technological and methodological experience) by which they can complete - in close co-operation with potential users - the functional plan of the system to be implemented, followed by software design and system development. The Institute undertakes the teaching in and training of users, system installation and supervision in the starting phase of operation, as well as the follow-up of its software products.

The main fields of applied research and development are as follows:

• artificial intelligence methods in medical diagnostics, process control, mechanical engineering and in the field of financial mathematics,
• expert- and knowledge-based systems in medicine and process supervisory systems,
• design and application of analogic CNN algorithms for high-speed image detection, e.g. for evaluation of mammograms, echo-cardiograms in the field of medicine, video compression techniques, cryptographic procedures,
• robust control, simultaneous identification and control, signal processing methods and their application in diagnostics and control of industrial processes and in integrated vehicle control system,
• computer integrated manufacturing systems,
• distributed information management,
• decision support systems,
• new technologies for local and wide area networks, WWW-based and multimedia tools, computerized libraries,
• specification of telecommunication protocols, development of protocol engineering tools and conformance testing
• software quality assurance,

Upon getting the award of numerous EU-grants, researchers of SZTAKI contribute extensively to European scientific co-operation projects The Institute was the first in our region to obtain an ESPRIT Basic Research Grant. Our international educational contacts include participation in the TEMPUS programme. Some research programs are supported by US Agencies, including NSF, ARO and ONR.

Recent years have delivered us promising development in our contacts with Western-European, North-American and Far-Eastern universities and research centers. Our senior researchers are also very active in the management and in the working committees of various international scientific organizations. Many researchers are members of editorial boards of leading international scientific periodicals.
 

A significant part of the researchers have scientific degrees - practically all researchers older than 30:

members of Academy of Sciences	6
Doctor of Academy of Sciences (Dr. Ac.)	10
Ph.D.	47
Dr. tech.	20

The Institute employs many young specialists. At present 60-65 full-time researchers are under 35 and 40-50 post-graduate, 20-30 graduate students are employed in part time. They complete their diploma-work or dissertation under the supervision of Institute's researchers.
 

The net profit of the contract-based work is completely used for supporting the basic research activity, consequently the Institute operate as a non-profit organization which is optimal from the point of view of the Hungarian taxation system.