László Györfi

After graduating, he became a research associate at the Telecommunications Research Institute (TKI). He defended his doctoral dissertation there in 1974. A year later, he was appointed to the Informatics and Electronics Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Budapest University of Technology (BME) as a research associate and then as a senior associate.

In 1990, he moved to the Department of Mathematics (later known as Computer Science and Information Theory) of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (VIK) of BME, where he was appointed as a university professor. A school-creating individual; he played a decisive role in the founding and launching of the technical informatics and applied mathematics majors, as well as in the development of curricula. He developed and introduced the subjects of mass communication, information theory, code theory and mathematical statistics. In 1995, in addition to his position as a university professor, he took over the leadership of the computer science and electronics research group, which he held until 2006. He was also the scientific deputy dean of the Faculty. Between 1999 and 2002, he was a Széchenyi professorial fellow.

From 2002 to 2007, he was also the deputy scientific director of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Computer Science and Automation Research Institute (SZTAKI).

He was a visiting researcher and visiting professor at several foreign institutions: CISM (International Centre for Mechanical Sciences), Udine (1971–1979, 1990), Mathematical Research Institute, Oberwolfach, Baden-Württemberg (1979–1990, 2000), Catholic University of Leuven (1987–1998). He taught and researched at many other French, German and Spanish universities.

He defended his candidate's thesis in 1978 and his academic doctorate thesis in 1988 in Mathematical Sciences. He became a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Telecommunications Systems Committee. In 1995, he was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and in 2001, a full member. He is basically a member of the Technical Sciences Department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but also a consultative member of the Mathematical Sciences Department. For several years, he was the chairman of the Electrical Engineering and Informatics Committee of the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. He is a member of the American IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and IMS (Institute of Mathematical Statistics).

His main research areas are technical mathematics, stochastic approximation, mathematical statistics and nonparametric function estimation. His work is significant in the field of coding multiple access channels. He has discovered new connections in the field of universal decision methods, which are of outstanding importance in the field of informatics and telecommunications from the point of view of modern pattern recognition and data compression methods. His results have expanded the possibilities of informatics procedures applicable in the technical field.

He is the author or co-author of over a hundred scientific publications, including four books and two book chapters. His publications are primarily in English and Hungarian.

His awards: Gyula Farkas Memorial Prize (Bolyai János Mathematical Society, BJMT, 1975); Pollák–Virág Prize (Communications and Informatics Scientific Association, HTE, 1990); Jacob Wolfowitz Prize 1997); Széchenyi Prize (shared, 2000); Middle Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2009); Academia Europaea member (Academia Europaea, 2010); Pro Facultate Prize (BME IK, 2016).