Representative of the Bosch Group in Hungary receives an Innovation Award

Budapest – Dr. István Szászi, Representative of the Bosch Group in Hungary and the Adriatic region, was honored this year with the Blue Innovation Award of the Management Association in Hungary, which was presented at the 27th annual Manager of the Year Award Gala. The award, which was presented last year to Katalin Karikó, Vice President of BioNTech, recognizes executives who have done an excellent job for innovation.

According to the appraisement of the Awarding Committee led by György Beck, Dr. István Szászi's life is an excellent example of how the Hungarian leaders, thanks to their talent and diligence, are also achieving great success at the head of the global companies operating in the region. Together with his award-winning colleagues, Dr. Szászi has been working on making Hungary the region's leading research and development site in the field of new technologies shaping the future of the automotive industry.

Bosch’s Engineering Center Budapest has been developing components for all automotive companies in the world, playing an increasingly prominent role within the Group, and is currently the only location where all six automotive divisions of the Bosch Group are represented. Established in 2005 with only a few people, the organization now employs more than 3,000 associates and conducts its most important research in the fields of artificial intelligence, automated vehicles and electromobility.

"The recognition we have just received confirms that my colleagues and I are on the right track; however, at the same time it also imposes a great responsibility on us. Innovation does not exist solely for itself, but must contribute to the common good and move the world forward. This is our task at Bosch, as we work for innovations every day, so that we can live in a more sustainable and environmentally conscious world, " said Dr. István Szászi upon accepting the award.

In close cooperation with universities
Dr. István Szászi was born in Mátészalka and conducted his PhD and MBA studies in the Budapest University of Technology. His scientific career started here as an assistant professor, and today he is an honorary lecturer at BME. He has been working for the Bosch Group for almost 20 years, and he also had two longer assignments in the German headquarters of the Group. He became the Head of the Engineering Center Budapest from a project engineer, and then – as the very first Hungarian in this position – he became the number one Representative of the Bosch Group in Hungary and the Adriatic region from 2021. He is responsible for more than 20,000 employees, including thousands of development engineers in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Dr. István Szászi is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Engineering, the Chairmanship of the German Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Trustees of the University of Óbuda.

He considers it important to increase the competitiveness of the region, to develop organizational competencies related to the automotive megatrends, and to have close cooperation with universities. His personal mission is to involve domestic universities directly in the international circulation of industrial innovation and to participate more actively in shaping the technology of the future. Today, the Group has excellent partnerships with almost all engineering training universities, not only in engineering and IT training, but also in research and development. The first Artificial Intelligence Industrial Department of Hungary was recently opened at the Lágymányos campus of ELTE with the support of the company.

The new 90,000-square-meter campus of the Bosch Group’s Engineering Center Budapest will open its gates in September, further strengthening Hungary's strategic role in automotive research.