Newly appointed interim general directors of HAS' new research centres taking office from January 2012 were encouraged to make confident but open minded decisions. HAS President József Pálinkás urged the nine new directors to establish research centres that can rely on a stable financial background while also attracting the co-operation of the scientific community.  

One of the most significant reforms in the history of the Academy, the renewal of HAS' research network focusing on a more sensible and cost-effective operation while also creating a more concentrated research strategy is much more than just a simple re-organisation of administration, said József Pálinkás at the celebration where the newly appointed interim general directors received their letters of commission. According to the President of HAS, the most important tasks of the directors are to eliminate parallelisms vis a vis the institutes, to create the possibilities for independent operation, and to make economicly sound structural changes in a relatively short period of time. He urged the new directors to seek out researchers currently working at foreign universities who could make a major contribution to the success of the newly founded research centres, a model already proven successful in the case of HAS' Momentum program. Only two or three well-chosen researchers are needed to fundamentally change and re-vitalise the performance of a research institute, József Pálinkás said. We must break with the status quo of low-performance and a segmented organisational framework. Our goal for the near future is to establish financially stable research institutes of high performance, capable of successfully applying for international grants within their fields, the President of HAS said.  

 

The renewal of HAS' institute network creates a rare opportunity for the research community, General-Secretary of HAS Tamás Németh said, adding that Hungarian researchers have been granted the chance of progress instead of mere survival.

 

The interim general directors of HAS' newly founded research centres are as follows:

 

Zoltán Bedő, Centre for Agricultural Research

Pál Fodor, Research Centre for the Humanities

Péter Ábrahám, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences

János Gadó, Centre for Energy Research

Károly Fazekas, Research Centre for Economics and Regional Studies

András Báldi, Centre for Ecological Research

András Körösényi, Centre for Social Studies

János Szépvölgyi, Research Centre for Natural Sciences

Péter Lévai, Wigner Research Centre for Physics

 

Institutes not affected by the reforms, i.e. the Institute of Nuclear Research, the Institute of Experimental Medicine, the Research Institute for Linguistics, the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, the Computer and Automation Research Institute, and the Biological Research Centre at Szeged will continue their operation unchanged.

The newly appointed interim general directors are going to take office on January 1, 2012 and will resign within a year from now by which time the assignment of new leaders selected by an international application process will have been completed.