Dr Zsolt Szalay, head of the department, gave an interview to Index news portal

The topic of the interview goes beyond the scope of the departmental activities, as Zsolt Szalay, Associate Professor of the Department of Automotive Technologies at BME, as a member of the MIT REAP Scale Up Hungary team, together with András Nemeslaki, Professor of the Department of Management and Business Economics at BME, discussed it, how the University of Technology has already started to put into practice the proposals developed for the Hungarian government during the international program led by Boston University to release the Hungarian economy from the trap of mediocre development.

For years, the Department of Automotive Technologies has been focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship as a key principle in its operating philosophy, but the MIT program will also support the correct and successful implementation of the model change at the University of Technology, and the proposal package developed by the Hungarian team during the program could also provide a turning point for the innovation-driven development of Hungarian higher education as a whole.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP) is a global initiative to accelerate growth in participating countries and regions by supporting innovation-driven entrepreneurship. The program involves a team of participants from a country (or region) working with MIT experts to develop a realistic and detailed package of proposals and roadmap for the government of the country that can be implemented in the short to medium term. The implementation of this proposal is expected to lead to a substantial improvement in the openness to start-ups, productivity and innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Hungary is the first and so far only Central and Eastern European participant in the 10-year history of the program. BME is also part of the Hungarian Scale-up Hungary team.

The Index article can be found via this link.