AI Summit Budapest 2026

Zoltán Pogátsa

Economist, Sociologist, and Associate Professor
Sopron University

Since 1999, he has been a lecturer, researcher, and later Associate Professor at the Lamfalussy Sándor Faculty of Economics of the University of West Hungary. Between 2000 and 2005, he also worked as a Teaching Assistant and Researcher at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). From 2005 to 2015, he was a member of the Regional Competitiveness Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has led and contributed to numerous international cooperation and research projects, including the Hungary–Serbia Cross-Border Cooperation Programme (2007–2013) and the Hungary–Croatia Cross-Border Cooperation Programme (2007–2013), serving as Lead Planner at VÁTI’s Strategic Planning Directorate. He has also been a faculty member of the Erasmus Mundus Master in Eastern European Research at the University of Bologna and a doctoral supervisor at the University of West Hungary. In addition, he regularly teaches at the Central European University Business School and Corvinus University of Budapest. In 2013, he conducted research on the Greek financial crisis in Athens with the support of a Greek state scholarship, publishing the findings in a book. His teaching covers subjects such as the economics of European integration, international political economy, the economy of Central Europe, and European Union policies. His primary research interests focus on European integration, with particular emphasis on the EU's peripheral countries. Since 2020, he has also been a featured speaker for Tudományos Stand Up, a science communication and event organization initiative dedicated to making academic knowledge accessible to wider audiences.