Ervin Balázs, Ph.D.
At the end of 2004 he was appointed as
department head of applied genomics in Martonvásár, Agricultural Research Institute,
which is a new unit of that large and well recognized breeding institute of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences.


He received his M Sc in 1972 in horticultural sciences and obtained
his Ph D in plant pathophysiology in 1977 in Budapest. Received a doctorat d'etat
in Strasbourg in 1986 in molecular biology at Université Louis Pasteur (1986) and
later became Doctor of Sciences in Budapest (1988). He has spent several years at
Cornell University Ithaca N.Y. USA, IBMC Strasbourg, France and FMI, Basel, Switzerland.
After those postdoctoral years he returned to Hungary and worked further in the Plant
Protection Institute in Budapest. In 1990 he became the founding scientific general
director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Center, Gödöllö, which institute was
leaded by him in the first decade. From the end of 2000 he established the
Environmental Biosafety Research Institute at the Center.

His major research interest is plant genetic engineering with special references to viruses.
He published more than hundred scientific papers and he is a regular lecturer at the
large international scientific conferences. He also involved in GMO research and regulations.
He took part in the formulation of UNCED Agenda 21 chapter 16 on Biotechnology, the UNEP
International Technical Guidelines on Safety in Biotechnology and in the Cartagena Protocol.
He was also the scientific advisor for the Hungarian gene technology act and at present he
is member of the gene technology Advisory Body.
He is serving as editorial member of several international journals including the
Environmental Biosafety Research.
In 2000 he was awarded with Szechenyi Prize and in 2001 with the Blaise Pascal
International Research Chair.