Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2014

The Story of Andrew Stephen Grove - Mover of Intel Corporation and Pillar of Silicon Valley

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Grove was born András István Gróf in Budapest, Hungary in 1936. He is a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry, businessman, engineer, manager, and author. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary in 1956 and moved to the US where he finished his education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York in 1960 (graduated No.1 in class) and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of CA, Berkeley in 1963. After graduation, he worked for 5 years at Fairchild Semiconductor where he researched integrated circuits that eventually led to the microcomputer revolution in the 1970’s. In 1968 Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (of Moore’s law fame) founded Intel and Andrew Grove joined them as the company’s first employee. He has been with Intel ever since, serving in various capacities including president in 1979, its CEO in 1987 and its Chairman and CEO in 1997. In 2004 he switched to being a senior advisor and lecturer at Stanford University.
Grove is credited with having transformed Intel from a maker of memory chips into a most dominant producer of microprocessors, with close to 100 000 employees. During his career, Intel became the model for Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley became the model for the world. And Grove became Time’s Man of the Year (1997) - an icon of the promise of American life.
His main slogan in approaching business, that is “Only the Paranoid Survive” grew out of his difficult life experiences. Other relatively new managerial concepts such as “strategic inflection point”, “constructive confrontation”, “knowledge power trumps position power” and the “devil is in the details” are also attributed to Grove’s innovative leadership style. These ideas guided him in making Intel’s death –defying climb to dominate the market for the world’s most important product in our digital information age. It can be safely said without hesitation that he is the best role model we have for doing business in the 21st century.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Dr. John P. Gyekenyesi is the Structures and Materials Division Engineer (retired) at the NASA Glenn Research Center and Adjunct Professor of Mechanics at Cleveland State University. He holds a bachelor and a master degree in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in Mechanics from Michigan State University. He authored and coauthored more than 80 scientific publications. He lectured widely in the USA, Europe and the Far East, mainly on durability and structural integrity of aircraft and spacecraft using advanced materials. For 20 years, he was manager of one of NASA’s largest mechanics research departments, focused on propulsion and power systems.

---

Hungarian Scientists in the United States

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Hungarian scientists came to the United States in several waves over the last hundred years. Many of them became world-famous Nobel Prize winners in the twentieth century, others have been working in the United States for decades, while many came more recently. The combination of the knowledge provided by the Hungarian education system and the conditions offered by the US research and scientific community is a special characteristic of most of these scientists. Last year I started organizing conferences dedicated to the scientific heritage of the great Hungarian minds, but with a future-oriented perspective. We want to see what the future holds for science. Our starting point was John von Neumann, who had an immense impact on various fields such as computer science/artificial intelligence, mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics and even meteorology and climate change. But other Martians of the last century have also given a lot to the world, and the new generation of young scientists is also on the rise. In November 2023, probably the largest multidisciplinary conference ever dedicated to Hungarian science was held at New York University. In April this year, Philadelphia became the venue for the next major scientific event, a city where Katalin Kariko spent several decades to achieve her outstanding scientific results, that earned her the Nobel Prize. This year is also memorable because two outstanding scientists, Gyorgy Olah and John Harasnyi, received the Nobel Prize exactly 30 years ago. In addition, 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of Erno Rubik's famous cube, which has enchanted hundreds of millions of people over the past decades. These events and anniversaries give us further opportunities to strengthen cooperation between Hungarian and American scientists and educators through innovative ideas and events.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Tamas Novak has been an S&T diplomat at the Consulate General of Hungary in New York since 2018. Prior to his current position, he worked at the Budapest Business School, where he was the Chair of International Business and held various leadership positions. In addition to his teaching duties, he was a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2013-2014, he spent a year at SAIS in Washington DC. as a research fellow of the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation. Tamas holds an MSc in Economics and a PhD in International Relations from Corvinus University in Budapest.

---

The Role of Hungarian Mathematicians in Developing the Science of Social Network Analysis

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Each one of us is part of a social network, from which no one is left out. Though we do not know everyone on the globe or even in our community, each person is connected to every other person through links with people. Similarly, there is a path linking any two neurons in the brain, any two companies in the world. Likewise, one might study the spread of infections or the dispersal of ideas on the internet through their linkages. The interconnections between any numbers of phenomena may be studied through social network analysis, a discipline that started in the 1930s in sociology.

The field of social network analysis was greatly advanced by the work of Hungarian mathematicians, most notably Paul Erdős and Alfréd Rényi who applied graph theory to the study of social networks. This enabled the visual illustration of networks and accelerated its growth from the domain of sociology to information technology, medicine, marketing, and other diverse disciplines. Hungarian mathematicians have made significant contributions to the science not just to its visualization, but also the popularization of the method, most notably Albert-László Barabási among others. The roles of Hungarian mathematicians and scientists in developing this field will be highlighted during this talk.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Klara Papp, PhD is professor and Associate Dean of Assessment and Evaluation at Penn State College of Medicine. She earned her PhD in educational psychology from State University of New York at Buffalo. She provides expertise to medical faculty in educational testing and measurement. She recently moved to Pennsylvania from Cleveland, Ohio where she directed the Center for the Advancement of Medical Learning (CAML) at Case Western Reserve University. On a national level, Klara served as chair of the research committee for Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine and received its Charles H. Griffith III Educational Research Award. She has served as an accreditation reviewer for California schools and colleges, and has been a member of the NIH study section for grants in health and science education. She applied social network analysis in illustrating relationships among Scientists at Case Western Reserve University and became fascinated with its potential for identifying areas of growth and development.

---