Dániel Csanády

Dániel Csanády is a project coordinator at Wigner Research Centre for Physics. Since 2014, he has been coordinating the In-Kind Contributions of the Wigner Centre to ESS. In 2015, he was delegated to the In-Kind Review Committee of ESS by the Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office and recently concluded his second two-year term as Vice Chair of the In-Kind Review Committee. He was a Field Coordinator of the South-East In-kind Hub of the first BrightnESS project 2015-2018 and recently he is working as the Hungarian In-Kind Field Coordinator of BrightnESS².

I have been involved in BrightnESS since the preparation of the initial BrightnESS proposal back in 2015. Wigner Research Centre for Physics was heavily involved in the scientific Work Package, but we were taking part in the non-scientific, organisational development and awareness raising Work Packages as well. During the project design my task was to plan Wigner’s contributions to the non-scientific Work Packages. Since BrightnESS2 is built on the organisational innovations and good in-kind practices of BrightnESS, it was a pleasure for me to being able to continue this work in the In-Kind Contribution Management Work Package of the current project.

I am neither a physicist nor an engineer but a social scientist with a legal background. In addition to being a lecturer at several Hungarian universities I was consulting not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises since the early ‘90s. I gained my international development experiences in the United States, in Scotland, at the EU administration in Brussels and in Strasbourg, in the Balkans and throughout the Central European region. As the legal form of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) was only born in 2009, a very young not-for-profit corporate form, it is a really exciting professional experience for me to take a close look at the development of by far the most ambitious ERIC in Europe, along with its achievements and challenges.

Originally, I was asked to set up the administration of Wigner’s In-Kind Contributions to ESS. Later on, I had the privilege of being the Hungarian delegate to the In-Kind Review Committee of ESS and to foster In-Kind Contributions of different research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as an In-kind Field Coordinator of the BrightnESS project.

My work to facilitate In-Kind Contributions to ESS from all over Europe is essentially a collaboration building task and a continuous problem-solving exercise. I am analysing human and financial conditions of promising R&D activities, clarifying and mediating interests on both sides of an in-kind delivery schedule, as well as seeking for good practices, organisational innovations, useful procedures and legal precedents during the realisation of In-Kind Contributions to ESS. In most parts of Continental Europe the legal concept of ‘in-kind’ is fairly new, therefore we are exchanging best practices with ESS and other Field Coordinators involved in the BrightnESS² project.

If you are working for the success of ESS, you are working for a much larger community than your own department or research institute, on a potentially Europe-wide area, where you could contribute to the prosperity of your colleagues, of your academic community, and to a brighter future of the scientific economy in Europe. I like the multi-disciplinary and overall international nature of this job very much and I am proud to be a part of this highly ambitious Pan-European enterprise.

Last but not least, I am grateful to life for the highly valuable human relationships, sometimes even friendships, among great colleagues, distinguished scientists, excellent engineers and outstanding managers whom I have come to know throughout this work across Europe.