CHARM-EU partner ELTE launches Innovation Press Club

Five people in a table with a digital screen background
Fri, 06/03/2022 - 10:31

Aiming to make scientific results known and accessible to the widest possible range of society, ELTE’s Center for Innovation has recently launched a new initiative to inform the press about the latest innovation projects connected to the university.  

Being an internationally embedded research university, CHARM-EU partner ELTE is a flagship of Hungarian R&I that recognizes the importance of Open Science and the cooperation with external industrial and societal stakeholders. In connection to this strategy, ELTE’s Center for Innovation has launched the Innovation Press Club: an initative to communicating with the media about the latest innovation projects connected to the university.  Interconnecting with the goals of CHARM-EU’s research dimension TORCH, the successful dissemination of scientific results achieved at the university is the main ambition of this new Innovation Press Club Initiative.

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Gábor Mező, research professor at the second Innovation Press Club held on May 26

The first Innovation Press Club held on May 17 presented two social innovation projects regarding the role of artificial intelligence in dermatological practice and the question of how can we make digital devices safe for our children. Co-founder Tibor Kecskeméti and Ericsson’s product manager Attila Ulbert talked about the emdee.ai medical app developed by researchers from ELTE and from Semmelweis University. The application facilitates the early detection of skin lesions by classifying them according to hazard levels and drawing the users’ attention to when to see a dermatologist. Ádám Miklósi and Krisztina Liszkai-Peres presented an application package developed for 4-6 year olds by research psychologists, biologists and computer scientists at the Alpha Generation Lab of ELTE. The main goal of their Alfi app is to create age-appropriate and child-friendly content that develops children’s cognitive, social and problem-solving skills while ensuring that gadgets do not separate but connect them with their parents.

The second press breakfast on May 26 focused on a patent-pending multidisciplinary drug development project of ELTE-ELKH’s Research Group of Peptide Chemistry. Professor Gábor Mező, head of the research group presented the results of experiments aimed at developing a new drug: an anticancer agent that kills tumor cells with high efficiency and significantly increases the chances of survival. As the substance is currently in the resource intensive preclinical phase, the research team and ELTE’s Center for Innovation are looking for funding from external investors.

The regular press club is supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office’s Science Patronage.