BME and Ericsson plan even closer cooperation

2024. April 26.

Magnus Frodigh, VP and Head of Ericsson Research, has held talks with BME’s leaders about continuing their thirty-year collaboration.

The ongoing cooperation is based on the fact that nearly half of the engineers working at Ericsson's R&D center in Budapest graduated from the BME. Numerous new developments, more than 100 PhD students, more than 30 patents, and over 1000 publications are the results of the cooperation. “I am proud that an outstanding company like Ericsson has been a strategic partner of BME for more than three decades. Although Ericsson has an extensive network of university partners around the world, BME and within it the High-Speed Network Laboratory (BME HSN Lab) is one of the most important of the company's academic partners outside Sweden, and this is of outstanding importance not only for our university but for the entire national economy”, emphasized Tibor Czigány, Rector of the BME at the meeting. Tibor Czigány recalled that Ericsson’s R&D centre in Budapest employs nearly 1700 engineers, more than 40% of whom graduated from BME. He added that the basis of our cooperation is to align our educational programme with Ericsson’s needs and to continuously respond to the company’s demand for innovative technologies.

Speaking at the meeting, Magnus Frodigh said, “For Ericsson to remain a technology leader, we need a strong ecosystem of industrial and academic partners. BME has been a trusted partner for over 30 years, providing the highly skilled engineering and technology professionals we need. Our research collaborations with BME are also recognized by Ericsson at the Group level, as these research results have an impact both on the implementation of Ericsson’s research strategy and on our product development sector. As with previous generations of mobile networks, our strategic university partners like BME continue to play an important role in helping us to build the path to 6G and beyond together to shape the future.”

The leaders reviewed the achievements of the cooperation agreement signed in 2018 and agreed on joint programmes at the meeting to further strengthen their relationship.

The BME HSN Lab started its operations at BME in 1992 and has become a unique global competence centre for Ericsson, not only in Hungary but also in the region. Thanks to the cooperation with Ericsson, a complex 5G live network and test infrastructure supports the University’s training and research activities. Engineers from BME and Ericsson are working on several projects in agriculture and industry to extend the benefits of 5G systems to new smart industrial applications and real-time automated control of cooperative robots. The BME HSN Lab has developed into a leading knowledge centre and has gained an international reputation in the field of telecommunication networks and technologies. More than 100 PhD students have obtained doctoral degrees, over 30 technology patents have been filed and around 1000 scientific publications have been published by the HSN Lab staff over the last three decades.

The leaders of BME and the Swedish telecommunications company also discussed international cooperation opportunities. BME has been by far the most important national participant in the European Union’s innovation framework programme Horizon Europe for many years. Since joining the EU, the Budapest University of Technology and Economics has been the most successful institution (in terms of all applicant organisations and companies, in addition to universities) in the EU’s innovation framework programmes, not only in Hungary but also among the V4 countries. Building on their common professional background and achievements, BME and Ericsson are planning to cooperate more closely on Horizon Europe applications.

Anders Caspár, Director of External Research Relations at Ericsson, András Boráros-Bakucz, Head of Ericsson's R&D Centre in Budapest, András Császár, Head of Ericsson Hungary’s Research Department, Miklós Verseghi-Nagy, Chancellor, János Levendovszky, Vice-Rector for Science and Innovation, Charaf Hassan, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Rolland Vida, Head of the High-Speed Network Laboratory (HSN Lab) of BME, and the heads of the departments involved in the cooperation, as well as other senior representatives of Ericsson Hungary participated on the event and in the discussions.