Fourteen Foreign Visiting Researchers to be Involved in Domestic Research in Hungary in 2024 with the Support of the Academy

Applications for the calls for proposals were received from all three major disciplines: the humanities and social sciences, the life sciences and mathematics and natural sciences.

The applications were evaluated by a twelve-member jury of experts in the respective disciplines and, after a thorough peer review and comparison, they recommended a ranking of excellence for the applications to the Secretary General of MTA. Out of a total support budget of 100 million Hungarian forints, the Secretary General of MTA decided to award grants ranging from 4.7 million forints to 9 million forints to successful applicants.

Charles Toth, Research Professor at Ohio State University (USA) and Honorary Doctor at the Budapest Technical University (BME), is an internationally recognised authority on point cloud-based data acquisition technologies and mobile mapping systems. At BME’s Department of Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics, point cloud data acquisition and data processing technologies have been a central research topic for more than two decades, and the field has produced numerous doctoral degrees and high-profile publications. Currently, three PhD students are working on similar topics, which is also the basis of a senior researcher’s MTA doctoral thesis. With Toth’s help, the Department will be able to conduct cutting-edge research at an international level, and his support is a major boost to the work of his colleagues in the department. In contrast to the traditional digital earth approach, point clouds with high accuracy and detail serve a wide spectrum of engineering applications, and the application of artificial intelligence has given a new impetus to processing methods worldwide. Algorithms and workflows will be developed that allow the automatic processing of large amounts of data with optimal use of resources. The main objective is to segment and classify objects of interest (e.g. roads, building elements, vehicles) that serve as input for further applications (e.g. vehicle dynamics simulations, BIM applications).

Max Trecker, Professor at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa) in Leipzig, Germany is conducting joint research in Hungary on the active international relations of Hungarian economists abroad and of foreign economists with Hungarian economics during the period of state socialism. With this research, the careers of individuals such as József Bognár and Mihály Simai are explored, as well as the international networks in which they were involved. The activities of foreign economists invited to Hungary, for example, from the GDR or the Soviet Union, or from Western countries, will also be investigated. The starting point for the research is that, after 1957, Hungary played a prominent role as an international academic location for economics after 1957, compared to the country’s actual economic importance. The joint research will yield new results on Hungary’s participation in global professional and policy expert networks, which are also relevant for the research of the History of Globalisation Research Group on international networks and knowledge transfer.

Professor Sanjib Kumar Panda of the Central University of Rajasthan (India) will be hosted by the Centre for Agricultural Research. Rice and wheat play a prominent role in the food supply, but global climate change is causing major yield losses for these crops. Limited water supply and deteriorating soil quality often lead to drought and salt stress. These stresses negatively affect crop growth and yields. Sustainable agriculture to feed a growing population requires the cultivation of more stress-tolerant varieties. A good starting point for this work is the elucidation of specific biochemical and molecular mechanisms regulating the non-ionic (drought) and ionic (NaCl) osmotic stress responses of rice and wheat. The joint experiments will make it possible to combine the expertise and methodological knowledge of the researchers from both countries, which will contribute to the successful completion of the research work. The results will bring significant cultural and social benefits, including international and national recognition of Indian and Hungarian science, knowledge and technology exchange and enhanced food security in both countries.

András Kovács, Professor at Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), will work with scientists from the Energy Science Research Centre. Modern semiconductor materials are an important part of everyday communication applications and are of great importance for the realisation of an environmentally-conscious circular economy. The characterisation of these materials at the atomic level helps in creating and understanding the heterostructures needed to develop manufacturing technologies. Transmission electron microscopy and related techniques are best suited for understanding the structure, composition and electronic properties at atomic resolution. The prestigious Jülich Research Centre plays a pioneering role in the development and application of microscopy techniques in the fields of physics, chemistry, materials science and biology. The visiting researcher will be actively involved in the ongoing research on two-dimensional MoS₂ and wide bandgap Ga₂O₃ semiconductors at the EK MFA for a period of three months, with the researchers intending to continue the project in an EU-funded collaboration. The experimental work will involve the investigation of the structural and electronic properties of MoS₂ deposited in an atomic layer in GaN, SiC and Al₂O₃ heterojunction structures. For Ga₂O₃, the structural and chemical processes are investigated as a function of temperature with the use of high-resolution analytical measurements. Some experiments will be carried out with the help of the unique worldwide infrastructure at Jülich.

Judit Kormos, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Lancaster (UK), will be hosted by the HUN-REN Language Research Centre. In collaboration with members of the Multilingualism and Educational Linguistics Research Group, she will investigate the relationship between native language decoding skills, phonological awareness and comprehension, and reading and writing performance in English as a foreign language among Hungarian secondary school students. As part of their research, 80-100 high school students aged 16 to 18 in three different types of schools in Budapest will complete standardised and validated reading comprehension tests in their mother tongue and in a foreign language and will write argumentative and narrative texts in English. An internationally-recognised and nationally-standardised computer-based assessment tool will be used to collect information on participants’ native language decoding skills and phonological awareness. The relationships between native and foreign language skills are to be tested on a structural model with the use of the collected data. The results will provide important information in terms of foreign language teaching methodology and insights into the areas of foreign language writing and literacy for which learners, and potentially dyslexic learners, with poorer native language reading comprehension and decoding skills need support.

Florian Luca, Professor at the School of Maths, Wits University (Johannesburg, South Africa) is spending three months as a visiting researcher at the University of Debrecen’s Department of Algebra and Number Theory, Faculty of Science and Technology. Within the framework of the programme, he and members of the Debrecen Number Theory Research Group are conducting joint research on the Diophantine properties of linear recursive sequences, which are central to the theory of exponential Diophantine equations.

Ákos Magyar, Professor at the University of Georgia (USA), is spending half a year at the Rényi Alfréd Mathematical Research Institute. One of the topics of the planned research is the study of higher-order Diophantine equations in the field of prime numbers. The theory around this is less developed, including Hua’s classical theorem on the decomposition of numbers into prime power sums. Closely related to this is the other raised issue regarding the regularity of Diophantine equations, which is a fundamental question at the border between number theory and Ramsey theory. The planned joint research therefore touches on some central issues of number theory and Ramsey theory.

Professor Valdimir B. Arion, from the University of Vienna (Austria), will be hosted at the University of Szeged. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, but the active substances currently used in medicine often cause side effects. Thus, there is a strong drive to develop new anti-tumour drugs that are effective but much better tolerated. The development of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) targeting compounds is currently a hot topic in cancer research. Arion and his colleagues will develop and examine metal complexes that are expected to induce ER stress in cancer cells, which will inhibit their function and eventually lead to cell death. Primarily, the synthesis and solution behaviour of copper, zinc, organoruthenium and organozmium complexes of tridentate and bidentate indoloquinolines are to be studied and tested for anti-cancer activity. The visiting researcher will share his experience on the synthesis and crystallisation of metal complexes with the host institution’s doctoral students, in addition to preparing joint publications.

Christian Müller, Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany), is a prominent researcher on six-membered ring phosphorus compounds. Using his knowledge and direct guidance, a new, stable divalent carbon-containing six-membered cyclic phosphine carbide is being produced at BME’s Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry. The properties of the carbene to be produced are significantly modified compared to known carbenes due to the six-membered ring structure and can be fine-tuned by changing the substituents. Thus, using the product as a ligand, the catalytic properties of their complexes (see, for example, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) can be changed. The joint research project will provide an opportunity for the organisation of a cumulative seminar series on phosphorus chemistry, which will be open to interested researchers from ELTE and HUN-REN TTK, in addition to BME faculty and students.

Mauro Santos is a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The joint research aims to explore the potential for evolving univariate and multivariate adaptive phenotypic plasticity to increase the probability of persistence in response to continuous, controlled environmental change (e.g. global warming) accompanied by random environmental fluctuations within generations. The results will inform the empirical evidence needed to draw robust conclusions about the role of phenotypic plasticity in evolution. The aim is also to explore the consequences of different types of epistasis (synergistic or antagonistic epistasis) during the evolution of early genetic systems, using the stochastic corrector model as a starting point, building on first principles.

Mario Novak is a researcher at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb, Croatia. The multidisciplinary project uses a holistic approach to reconstruct the burial rites, chronological and demographic characteristics, and general health and mobility of the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BC) population along the Danube in Hungary and Croatia by combining bio-archaeological, traditional archaeological, radiocarbon and stable isotope data. This is the first research project to consider the larger region occupied by the Bronze Age population as a whole, irrespective of today’s national borders. The successful implementation of the project could have a great impact on bioarchaeological researches analysing the prehistoric populations of Central and Eastern Europe, providing an example for a subsequent series of researches. One important outcome of the project will be the creation of an extensive research network of Hungarian and Croatian experts and institutions with various profiles, who together will be able to answer complex research questions in archaeology and related sciences. Ultimately, this joint research will strengthen the competitiveness of Hungarian and Croatian researchers in the European research area, as well as their position in the search for funding and in the development of international cooperation.

Maria Elen Alvarez, Professor at the National University of Cordoba (Argentina), will be hosted by the Biological Research Centre in Szeged. The project will investigate physiological processes in plants during drought and salt stress, as well as the regulation of the interaction between proline metabolism and redox balance. Plant vitality and the yield of cultivated varieties are adversely affected by drought and high soil salinity. One of the consequences of this type of stress is a reduction in the efficiency of photosynthesis, resulting in the accumulation of reactive oxygen species and an alteration of the redox balance of cells. A characteristic physiological change is an increase in proline concentrations, which has a protective function. This research will investigate the impact of changes in proline metabolism on redox balance using a biosensor protein (GRX1-roGFP2), which makes it possible to monitor the changes taking place in living cells. The activity of GRX1-roGFP2 will be investigated in the mutants of genes regulating proline biosynthesis and degradation, as well as in lines overexpressing these genes. Fluorescence changes will be monitored to investigate the effect of high osmotic and salt on redox changes in plants from different genetic backgrounds. The research will provide new insights into the physiological processes in plant cells, which can contribute to the success of the development of biotechnological programmes aimed at improving drought and salt tolerance.

Robert Vajtai is a professor at Rice University (Houston, USA). The joint research will develop alternative ways of producing and storing energy, in which the industrial-scale production of green hydrogen is expected to play a prominent role. The Department of Applied and Environmental Chemistry at the University of Szeged is conducting extensive research in the field of catalytic production and the characterisation of renewable energy carriers, investigating a wide range of materials from low-dimensional (0-2D) systems to 3D catalysts. A visiting researcher at Rice University, earlier famous for its Nobel Prize-winning materials science research (Robert Curl, 1996 in chemistry), he is working on the design and synthesis of novel low-dimensional materials. The project involves the development of a new catalytic platform in which materials of the BCN family are separated into suitable supports and are then utilised as metal-free or metal-decorated noble metal-free catalysts. The project will build on the complementary world-class facilities of the two universities and is expected to yield significant scientific results in both the short and long term. In addition to intensive publication activity, the collaboration will enable undergraduate, masters and PhD students to participate in world-class materials science research. The collaboration will also provide the basis for a broader, long-term collaboration between researchers at the University of Szeged and Rice University.

Mikko Petteri Laihonen is a researcher at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), conducting research at Eötvös Loránd University for a period of three months. Both the visiting researcher and the host researcher have previously led research on the Moldovan Csángós, collecting data through several participatory projects from 2016 to the present. As co-authors of the research results, they are preparing a multimodal study, which is quite uncommon in science communication, about their participatory research with Moldovan Csángós, which will serve the purpose of and need for the dissemination of the rich materials collected in conjunction with local research participants. These novel forms of dissemination also serve the pressing need for a renewal of the forms of distribution and publication in the field of sociolinguistics, including cutting-edge, multimodal and multilingual forms that go beyond the reach of (text-based) artificial intelligence. In addition, a new research project will be launched to investigate the sociolinguistic aspects of knowledge flows in multilingual academia among researchers in the humanities and social sciences in Central and Eastern Europe.