IFAC Symposium on Biological and Medical Systems

Prof. Dr. Levente Kovács, Director of Physcon, gave a plenary presentation on the results of the ERC project, which ended in October 2021, at the 11th International IFAC Symposium on Biological and Medical Systems in Geneva. Other presentations from the Physcon team were given by Dr. György Eigner, Dr. András Dániel Drexler and Bence Czakó.

https://bms2021.ugent.be/Plennary.html

As is well known, in conventional cancer therapies, doses are chosen to be as high as possible, maximising the effect of the drug and minimising the chance of drug resistance. However, this approach increases side effects and costs. Personalisation of treatments can result in lower doses of therapy with the same effect, resulting in lower drug costs and fewer side effects. Physcon has developed tumour models based on ordinary differential equations for several mouse models, including angiogenic inhibitors and cytotoxic drugs. It has also developed regulatory algorithms that focus on problems specific to physiological regulation. In silico tests have demonstrated that Physcon algorithms are also suitable for optimising therapies demonstrated in animal studies. These results were presented by Prof.Dr. Levente Kovács to an international audience.

EKIK PhysCon and BARK at the IFAC World Congress 2017

From 9 to 14 July 2017, the International Federation for Automatic Control (IFAC) held its triennial World Congress in Toulouse, France, the world’s largest and most prestigious international engineering conference.

The 2,724 contributions accepted (the total number of contributions was 4,267, an acceptance rate of 64%) came from 82 countries around the world. Hungary was represented by 33 researchers, 6 of them from the University of Óbuda (!), representing the EKIK Centre for Physiological Control (PhysCon) and the Antal Bejczy Centre for Intelligent Robotics (BARK).

Head of the Centre for Physiological Controls and ERC Principal Investigator Prof. Dr. habil. Levente Kovacs, with a young professor from the University of Ghana, Prof. Dr. Clara Ionescu (soon to become Honorary Professor at the University of Óbuda), organized a full Open Invited Track (OIT, one of the 76 OITs of the conference) in the IFAC Technical Committee, entitled 8.2. Validation and data-driven modelling in biomedicine”. The OIT took place from 13-14 July 2017 and included 18 papers, 16 invited and two invited sessions, and an interactive session. PhysCon was represented by Dr. Johanna Sápi and Dr. A. Dániel Drexler, and by Dr. Dávid Csercsik, researcher and head of the group, Prof. Dr. habil. Levente Kovács, presenting 3 papers from the only H2020 ERC grant of the University of Óbuda, entitled Tamed Cancer.

BARK organised an invited session on “Tensor Methods for Modeling and Control” on 11 July 2017, with 6 papers from 3 countries, and presented 2 papers. BARK was represented by its young associate professor Dr. Péter Galambos and PhD student József Kuti.

For more information, visit https://www.ifac2017.org.


IEEE 1st International Conference on Social Automation (SA 2019)

The first IEEE Societal Automation Conference was held from 4 to 6 September. The aim of the conference is to open up new perspectives in interdisciplinary research, focusing on the direct application of research results in the service of society. Researchers from the Centre for University Research, Innovation and Services at Óbuda University represented the interdisciplinary field of cyber-medical systems.

Dr. Prof. Levente Kovács and Dr. András Dániel András Drexler presented the latest results of the Physiological Control Research Centre at the first international conference on Social Automation. Dr. Prof. Levente Kovács, Rector of Óbuda University, in order to facilitate cooperation between the universities, the organizing university, AGH University of Science and Technology, was invited to participate.

World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics 2020

This year’s first international event of the University of Óbuda was held on 23-25 January in Herl’any, near Kassa, Slovakia, under the title of the IEEE 18th World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics (SAMI 2020).

In the first event of the annual calendar, the SAMI conference was organised by the Technical University of Košice, the University of Óbuda, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the IEEE Hungary Section and the Hungarian Fuzzy Society. Its importance and inevitable value lies in the fact that it used to be based solely on Hungarian-Slovak relations and was limited to a local event, whereas now it is recognized as an international conference sponsored by the Hungarian IEEE branch and the submitted papers are accepted by the IEEE Xplore database, which greatly increases the value, accessibility and searchability of the publications.

The World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics (SAMI 2020) was opened by Prof. Dr. Levente Kovács, Rector of Óbuda University, who highlighted the main features of the event. Initially, only two countries were represented, but 18 years later, 12 countries are represented. He paid tribute to the tradition of the conference series and appreciated the great work of Prof. Dr. Imre J. Rudas and Professor Ladislav Madarász, founders of SAMI. At the opening ceremony, Prof. Dr. Stanislav Kmet ‘, Rector of the Technical University of Kazan, Honorary Professor of the University of Óbuda, emphasized the role of close and active international and scientific cooperation between the two institutions, reaffirmed his support for the SAMI conference and suggested the inclusion of various other topics in the field. The Rectors agreed that the long-term cooperation between the two universities has so far played an important role for both institutions and is essential for international recognition, and agreed to do their utmost to maintain this good relationship. Liberios Vokorokos, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics of the Technical University of Kazan, confirmed his support to the University of Óbuda and the SAMI conference series and expressed his intention to continue the cooperation, for example by publishing in the international journal Acta Polytechnica Hungarica.

Besides the scientific success and value of the event, the participants were saddened to remember the ever-active, energetic, tireless Professor Baltazar Frankovič, a regular participant of the symposium, who, unfortunateAt this year’s conference, the renowned plenary speakers of Pázmány Péter Catholic University and SZTAKI, Prof. Dr. Gábor Szederkényi from Pázkari University of Pázkari, Belgium, whose lecture on “Analysis and verification of non-negative dynamical models with network structure”, Dr. Cosmin Copot from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, on “A graph-oriented approach to robot system programmability”, and finally Dr. Csaba Johanyák from the John von Neumann University in Kecskemét, Hungary, on “Fuzzy Logic-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems”.The conference programme included a special session with seven talks on intelligent applications of IT, presented by Prof. Dr. In his honour, the Hungarian Fuzzy Association and Budapest Tech established the Baltazar Frankovič Young Researcher Award, which is awarded to the best article and talk by young people under the age of 35 at the annual SAMI Symposium.

Besides the scientific success and value of the event, the participants were saddened to remember the ever-active, energetic, tireless Professor Baltazar Frankovič, a regular participant of the symposium, who, unfortunately, can no longer gift us his eternal optimism. In his honor, the Hungarian Fuzzy Association and Budapest Tech established the Baltazar Frankovič Young Researcher Award, which is awarded to the best article and talk by young people under the age of 35 at the annual SAMI Symposium.

This year, Tímea Fülöp, MSc student of Sapientia University, received the award.Together with Rector Dr. Levente Kovács, the evening reception was opened by Dr. Radovan Hudák, Vice Rector for International Relations of the Technical University of Košice, who proudly mentioned that he received the Frankovič Prize in 2010.

The professional and scientific value of the three-day event, as well as its networking and community-building role, is indisputable, and the positive feedback from participants confirms this fact.

The University of Tokyo has already issued a press release featuring Professor Takayuki Kawahara and his publication at the conference. The article can be found here: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/archive/20200123001.html . We appreciate that the event was announced by Japanese news, giving the event wide international visibility.

All information about the event can be found at the following link: http://conf.uni-obuda.hu/ sami2020


IEEE day, 2017

We celebrated the 30th anniversary of the IEEE Hungary Section.

Many dignitaries graced the event with their participation. Oussama Khatib and Imre J. Rudas were awarded the Rudolf Kalman Prize. Tibor Vámos and Péter Arató were awarded the IEEE HS 2017 Award of Excellence. Subsequently, the former and the resigning board members received a commemorative medal for their dedicated service.

Oussama Khatib gave an interesting presentation on human-robot cooperation. This was followed by lectures by newly awarded Honoris Causas Professors Huijun Gao, Viorel-Aurel Serban, Ivan Gutman, and Honorary Professors Clara Ionescu and Michael E. Auer.

We are grateful to the appreciative audience for their participation and look forward to seeing you at the next upcoming IEEE event.

ERC day, 2017

As part of the Hungarian Year of Science, a workshop was organised on 22 November 2017 at the Physiological Control Research Centre.

The workshop aimed to summarise the experiences and achievements of the first year of the Tamed Crayfish ERC Stg grant, while further emphasis was placed on discussing future challenges, including scientific and management issues. After an introduction by the Principal Investigator, Prof. Dr. habil. Levente Kovács, all the project researchers summarised their contributions to the audience. Prof. Dr. Zoltán Sápi, Professor of Pathology at Semmelweis University, gave a talk on the interrelationship between engineering approaches in medicine and targeted cancer therapies, while the postdocs (Dr. András Dániel Drexler, Dr. Johanna Sápi Sájevicsné and Dr. Dávid Csercsik) gave presentations on their narrow research areas. They also briefly presented the results of the student participants in the project (Bence Czakó and Tamás Gönczy). In the second part of the workshop, administrative issues were mainly discussed with the administrative staff of the University.