The mission of the Computer and Automation Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is to perform basic and application oriented research in an interdisciplinary setting in the field of computer science, intelligent systems, process control, wide-area networking and multimedia. The application tasks are performed on the basis of contracts with the aim of transferring the research results into the industry and state administration. The present staff consists of about 320 employees, out of which about 200 are university graduates. The Institute employs many young specialists. At present 60-65 full-time re-searchers 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. A significant part of the researchers have scientific degrees (6 members of Academy of Sciences, 10 Doctor of Academy of Sciences, 47 Ph.D. and 20 dr. techn.)

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 method-ological 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 su-per-visory systems,

design and application of analogic CNN algorithms for high-speed im-age 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, simulation, virtual enterprizes, supply chain management, etc.

distributed information management,

operational research, 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,

Quality management is an important issue at the Institute: we have an ISO 9002 certificate issued by TÜV Rheinland Euroqua and a BOOTSTRAP quality assurance system for SW-development.

The Institute has wide external relationships in its R & D profile. ERCIM (European Research Consortium of Informatics and Mathematics) granted full membership to the Institute in 1994. Members of the Consortium are national informatics research centers of EU and EFTA countries (one from a country) who aim at co-operating in projects of European scale and in joint education of young scientists. The Institute is a member of the W3 Consortium led by the MIT, of the European Software Institute and of other international organizations.

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 program. 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 re-search 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. SZTAKI recently was awarded by the "Centre of Excellence" in the Fifth Framework programme of the EU (HUN-TING)

Some EU projects with the participation of the CIM Research Laboratory: ISLAND, TARSAL, PROARC, EURORIM, OSACA, PLENT, FLUENT, EPSYLON, WHALES.

Address:

PoB. 63 (H-1518)
1111 BUDAPEST
Kende u. 13 - 17
Hungary
Tel: +36 1 209 6143
Fax: +36 1 466 7053

www.sztaki.hu