The recently announced "Academic and Industrial Collaboration Center – Research Infrastructure Development" funding programme allocates a total of HUF 25 billion (EUR 80 million) over the next four years to ensure the research base for industrial development projects that are based on real market needs, in cooperation with outstanding research institutes of the given field.

The programme focuses on providing funding to established successful bidding consortiums that are built on stable industrial-academic partnerships, and the funding is expected to result in four to six Academic and Industrial Collaboration Centers across Hungary.

The newly established Academic and Industrial Collaboration Centers will be required to develop a framework to ensure sustainable institutional operation and implement market-based innovation projects. The reinforcement of business-industrial bases will also help enhance R&D capacities at corporate enterprises in Hungary.

Under the programme, academic institutions commit to increasing the number of their R&D staff, and also make a commitment regarding the numbers of doctoral students to be involved in the research work, publications, industrial property rights protection proceedings and spin-off ventures stemming from the institutions. As the programme allows for the implementation of exploratory research, applied research and also experimental development, it will drive coordination of the various phases and the results of the research and development work.

To receive funding, applicants are required to obtain a favorable opinion issued on the basis of RDI considerations by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office, and to submit it along with their proposals. Also, their projects must fit in with any of the national sectoral priorities or intelligent technologies specified in the National Smart Specialization Strategy.

In assessing proposals against RDI considerations, evaluators will focus on the professional excellence of consortium members, the content of economic and technological novelty and technological quality, as well as potential economic and social benefits and expected impacts of the project proposal.

The application is open to consortia only, while the leader of a consortium must be an academic institution. The Academic and Industrial Collaboration Centers to be created across Hungary will directly be supervised by the rector of the consortium’s leader and by a professional body consisting also of the representatives of the founding consortium and partners providing the budget. The headquarters, premises or branches of consortium members must be located outside of the Central Hungary region.

Entries by institutions from the Central Hungary region will be invited by another call with a total allocation of HUF 4 billion (approx. EUR 13 million) designed upon a similar concept.