With the participation of 16 doctoral students, the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) have launched the EIT ICT Labs Budapest Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), with the aim to encourage research results that have the potential for being turned into innovative industrial products. Talented students work in collaboration with teams of researchers at the industrial partners of their respective universities, and are supervised by business experts.
The Budapest DTC was officially opened on 26 April 2013 by Willem Jonker, the CEO of the EU’s Knowledge and Innovation Community on ICT – EIT ICT Labs. The business ideas of the students in the Budapest DTC concern new navigational applications, the energy efficiency of mobile networks, the internet of things, and cloud computing, to give but a few examples.
Willem Jonker, the CEO of the EIT ICT Labs, explains that “the Budapest Doctoral Training Centre greatly stimulates the integration of academic education and business. By building on the high level technical knowledge and scientific results of the doctoral schools of highly renowned universities, companies have the potential to acquire more easily new technologies as well as highly skilled employees.”
Zoltán Horváth, the Dean of the Faculty of Informatics at the University ELTE, and the head of the EIT ICT Labs Budapest Associate Partner Group, points out that "the Budapest DTC develops a new set of skills, a new way of thinking, and valuable work experience among the students of informatics. On the one hand, it offers a special concentration of courses in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, it offers the possibility for institutional and geographical mobility. That is, during their studies, the students spend a minimum of six months at a leading and highly innovative ICT company, and study temporarily abroad at one of the most highly renowned universities in Western-Europe.”
“The research activity of BME is very much influenced by the demands of its industrial partners. The work of our doctoral students is crucial in this process since they form their research topic according to the feedback of their academic supervisors and the industrial professionals. This tradition can be further improved by the foundation of the EIT ICT Labs Budapest Doctoral Training Centre” – emphasized János Levendovszky, vice Dean of the BME Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, and Head of the BME Doctoral School of Information Science and Technology.
Zoltán Istenes, the manager of the EIT ICT Labs Budapest DTC, emphasizes the additional advantages of the DTC, which are “business experience gained at one of the industrial partners and courses completed at one of the partner universities abroad. The students are encouraged to launch their own start-up companies, and to put their new knowledge and expertise in practice.”
