A Research Centre for National Reproductive Methodology and family-friendly obstetrics will be established at the University of Pécs from nearly HUF 2.8 billion in state support. The construction by the Investment, Technical Development, Sports Operation, and Public Procurement Private Limited Company (BMSK Zrt.) will take more than a year according to the preliminary schedules.
Unfortunately, there were no Hungarian Nobel Laureates in 2021, but one of the awards had a Hungarian aspect. The first discovery related to paprika, which also deserved a Nobel Prize, was made by Albert Szentgyörgyi in 1937. The aim of this research was to produce vitamin C from green peppers. The second line of research, which this year saw David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian win the Nobel Prize, focuses on capsaicin, which can be isolated from hot peppers. Hungarian discoveries, including Pécs, have contributed to the successes in this field. In this context, I spoke to Professor Erika Pintér, Director of the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy at the Medical School, University of Pécs.
In 2017, the University of Pécs and its consortium partner, the University of Debrecen, won a HUF 1.85 billion non-reimbursable grant from the European Union in the Economic Development and Innovation Operational Programme published in the framework of the Széchenyi 2020 programme. This funding has enabled the opening of the UP 3D Printing and Visualisation Centreon the campus of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, creating an exciting, open and effective intellectual workshop, both in terms of instrumentation and expertise. Dr. László Palkovics, Minister of the Hungarian Ministry for Innovation and Technology also paid a visit to the UP 3D Printing and Visualization Centre on the occasion of the closing event of the project on 16 December.
The project "Establishment of the Centre for Health Data Analysis, Data Utilisation and Smart Devices and Technology Development at the University of Pécs" (Competence Centre), which will run for about 2.5 years, will be implemented with nearly HUF 2 billion in non-reimbursable EU funding. The University of Pécs, the 4iG Plc. and the Bay Zoltán Non-profit Ltd. for Applied Research are working on a novelty biomedical information technology analysis software package and a robot assisted nursing facility.
Researchers of the Virology National Laboratory at the Szentágothai János Research Centre, University of Pécs and RoLink Biotechnology Ltd. have inactivated the coronavirus in a UV chamber developed in-house, using UV-C light, thus making the COVID-19 pathogen more widely accessible for research.