Klara Csefalvay

At the turn of the 1960s, he was an optician trainee at Gamma Technical Co., Ltd. and then at the Hungarian Optical Works (MOM). He started studying at the Budapest University of Technology (BME) in 1961 – he studied at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (VIK) as a scholarship holder of the People's Republic of Hungary; in 1986, he also obtained his doctorate there.

He began his professional career in 1966 at the Department of Theoretical Electricity of BME, where he worked until 1999. Initially, he taught several subjects as an assistant professor and then as an assistant professor (Electrical Engineering, Signals and Systems, Theoretical Electricity). He participated in the training of technical informatics and instrumentation and communications engineering electrical engineering students and in the work of the Scientific Student Association (TDK).

In the early 1990s, he took on a new task: the development and operation of the university's academic administration and financial systems. At that time, student data at BME was stored and managed in applications running on the DOS operating system. The idea of systemizing educational organization is attributed to him. The first result of the developments was the Student Information System (HIR) for managing BME's credit-based education, for which he also developed the Tiris card access system that enabled the system to operate securely.

From 1996, based on his idea, the design of a study system, NEPTUN, that would meet more general needs and be uniformly applicable in higher education institutions, began. He also involved a few talented students in the work within the framework of an independent laboratory, while he himself actively participated in both the design and implementation. The development started after assessing the needs and educational structures of several universities with such intensity that in 1997 the first version of NEPTUN (which was still running on a Citrix terminal server at the time) was already introduced in the institutions participating in the survey. The system was then gradually developed further, taking into account user feedback, and adapting it to the needs of new institutions.

After the NEPTUN 2000 version, which had been developed in the meantime, a more modern, faster, more robust, easier to tune, and parameterizable three-layer application, Neptun.NET, was developed. By 1997, the system was already used in 45 domestic and 1 foreign higher education institution, while the number of its users was 300,000-350,000. In order to ensure interoperability between universities, to follow up on legislation, and to meet new demands set by universities, certain parts of the system were continuously rewritten.

He himself was involved in the further development of the system until 2004 – from 2000 onwards as the managing director of SDA Studio Ltd. (The successor company of the Ltd., SDA Informatika Zrt., has been the developer of Neptun.NET since 2009; by 2018, the use of this system had become common.)

His awards: For Socialist Culture (Minister of Culture and Public Education, 1989); Master of thematic supervision (BME, 1991); Honoris Causa Pro Scientia Gold Medal (National Council of Scientific Students' Associations, 1993). He received numerous other university awards and diplomas for his teaching and scientific activities.