Honorable mention for the February State Alumni Member of the Month feature: Hungarian Fulbright and HAESF alumnus Tamás Csörgő

Written by Fulbright on 02/03/2012. Posted in News

As a Fulbright alumnus, Dr. Csörgő challenges students in his village of Visznek, and in his former middle School in the city of Gyöngyös, both in Northern Hungary, to emulate the educational practices of the best universities in the world.  He  acted as a visiting research scholar at Harvard and at Case Western Reserve University, both with HAESF support. He was visiting researcher or professor also at other great universities including Columbia University in New York (supported by a Fulbright Advanced Research Award); the University of Lund, Sweden; the University of São Paulo, Brazil; and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He organized, with the support of a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award, the participation of Hungarian physicists in the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA, a world leading facility of the U.S. Department of Energy.

He directly applies the educational techniques that he sees at the best universities of the world to the Science Club of his former high school in Gyöngyös, Hungary, and based on this successful example, he initiated a nation-wide Science Club movement in Hungary. Dr. Csörgő, among other duties, has been serving as the volunteer manager of the Hungarian Fulbright alumni listserv for many years. He also volunteered for the Meet the Scientist Fulbright alumni initiative, promoting science, innovation and study in the U.S. to Hungarian high school students.

Dr. Csörgő is proud of his humble beginnings and strongly feels that coming from a modest, small village in the countryside should not impede anybody`s ability to succeed and build an international career. Besides the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Csörgő commutes to work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, at Harvard and at CERN in Switzerland but he also finds time to volunteer in the Hungarian Fulbright community and in his own community in the countryside. He still lives in his small village of Visznek, two hours from Budapest, which he considers the best place for creative work.

He has been serving his local community, his village and his former high school for four years providing summer camps in his own home for the children and attracting scientists and researchers from home and abroad to come as speakers. He has been at the forefront of a drive in Hungarian education towards self-education, currently runs five science clubs in high schools in the country and in Budapest involving alumni. He is a passionate proponent of personal responsibility in cultivating one’s own mind.

In August 2011, Dr. Csörgő received the Knight Cross from the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic from the President of Hungary for organizing the Hungarian participation in international collaborations like PHENIX in the United States, for supporting young talents and for his commitment to education. In September 2011, he was elected, for his scientific achievements, as a member of the Academy of Europe (London), a prestigious and highly selective non-governmental organization promoting learning, education and research on the European level.