The 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Road and Railway Society was celebrated with a special professional programme, the MAÚT30 International Scientific Symposium. Experts from Széchenyi István University participated in the early October conference held in Budapest, where the University’s students were recognized in the organisation's talent programme. For the first time, the Cultural Engineering Award, established in memory of the institution's former lecturer, Dr Péter Scharle, was also presented during the event.

Participants of the 30th anniversary symposium of the Hungarian Road and Railway Society had the opportunity to hear national and international speakers who are rarely heard in Hungary, discuss current issues of technical regulatory systems, climate check, decarbonisation, cost-effective innovation, social responsibility, circular economy, mobility technologies and sustainability. They were able to hear the views of the European Union Agency for Railways, FSV Austria, TU Delft and the Czech Technical University in Prague, among others. Lecturers and students from Széchenyi István University also took part in the event. Dr Petra Szakonyi from the Department of Transport Infrastructure and Water Resources Engineering was also invited to participate in a round table discussion in the social responsibility session.

Dr Petra Szakonyi, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Transport Infrastructure and Water Resources Engineering, Széchenyi István University

Invited by the University, Dr Lóránt Tavasszy from TU Delft visited both the Győr campus and the Budapest conference, first giving a lecture in English to the Civil Engineering students entitled "Towards an electric road system in the Rotterdam-Budapest corridor", and then presenting the topic at the international scientific symposium.

 Dr Lóránt Tavasszy, Professor at the TU Delft, also gave a lecture to the Civil Engineering students in Győr

The conference also focused on young professionals: at the closing event, young people from this year's NextGen competition launched by MAÚT were given the opportunity to speak. Dr Petra Szakonyi, Dr Zoltán Major and Dr Ágoston Winkler from Széchenyi University joined the talent programme as mentors, while Richárd Nagy joined as a topic leader, with civil engineering students Máté Gerencsér and Kristóf György Nagy coming third.

The students of Széchenyi István University achieved third place at the MAÚT Talent Programme

The Dr Scharle Péter Prize for Cultural Engineering was also awarded at the MAÚT30 International Scientific Symposium. The award was founded by the Hungarian Chamber of Engineers, the Budapest and Pest County Chamber of Engineers, the Hungarian Road and Railway Society and the Széchenyi István University in honour of Dr Péter Scharle (1940-2022), a chartered engineer, chartered engineer-mathematician, professor of the Department of Structural Engineering and Geotechnics at the University, who was a decisive, broad-minded and complex representative of the Hungarian technical intelligentsia of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Dr András Munkácsy, Head of the Transportation Development Research Centre of the Institute for Transport Science, was the winner of the award, out of six candidates. At the award ceremony, Dr János Szép, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Transport Sciences, congratulated the recipient on behalf of the university.

Dr András Munkácsy, Head of the Transport Development Research Centre of the Institute of Transport Sciences, received the award established in memory of the former lecturer of Széchenyi University