The ultimate objective of the project was the reinforcement of the research potential and competence of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) and its Department of Transport Economics in particular, in the research topic “transport infrastructure financing”. The project gave the opportunity to one of the new countries recently joined the enlarged European Union, Hungary, to develop new areas of expertise and enhance the knowledge in one of its most well-known universities, in a transport-related research topic that can play a determinant role in the country’s economic development.
This objective was met through the mobilization of researchers to and from BME in cooperation with two well known European Transport Research Institutes, INRETS and HIT. These three research centers coordinated their efforts in order to effectively transfer to BUTE knowledge and experiences related to transport infrastructure financing. Two researchers’ mobilization schemes were employed:
- Two experienced researchers was selected (following an international publication of vacancies) and recruited by BME in order to train the local staff of BME at its premises.
- Four BME researchers visited the laboratories of INRETS and HIT (two in each Institute), in order to be trained by the experienced researchers of these two Institutes.
Apart from the above, the project placed special attention in order to recruit researchers with substantial skills in training and experience in the research topic. Furthermore, the project partners exploited the extensive networks of ECTRI, FERSI, SETREF and EU Cordis in order to find the most appropriate experienced researchers, as well as disseminate the project results to a wide research audience.
Depending on the researchers’ mobilization scheme, the implementation plan of the project mainly contained:
- Training of the BME researchers through courses,
- Lecturing of students,
- Supervising of local projects in the research topic by the experienced researchers,
- Participation of BME researchers in programmes related to the topic of the project,
- Visits at the partners’ laboratories,
- Demonstration of advanced software applications,
- Information material to be distributed during the training programmes.