AI Summit Budapest 2026

Levente Kovács

rector
Óbuda University

Levente Kovács is an electrical engineer and professor at Óbuda University. He was born in 1977 in Reșița, Romania, and graduated from the Politehnica University of Timișoara in 2000. He earned his PhD from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2008. He has been a professor at Óbuda University since 2016 and has held the title of Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (DSc) since 2024. His research focuses on modern control theory and physiological control systems, primarily in the fields of diabetes and cancer therapy. He has published more than 600 scientific papers, with a cumulative impact factor of over 300, an h-index of 34, and more than 5,000 citations. He is listed among the Stanford Top 2% Scientists. In the field of diabetes, he works on the automated regulation of diabetic patients, including artificial pancreas systems. In 2010, he founded and has since led the Artificial Pancreas Working Group within the Hungarian Diabetes Association. In 2021, the Association awarded him the Hetényi Géza Lifetime Achievement Award, making him the first engineer to receive this recognition. His work in cancer therapy and diabetes focuses on automated algorithmic approaches to treatment. In 2015, he was awarded an ERC grant, the European Union’s most competitive individual research and development funding scheme. He is the founder and head of the Physiological Controls Research Center at Óbuda University, established in 2013. He was a recipient of the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences between 2012 and 2015. He has been an IEEE member since 2009 and an IEEE Senior Member since 2018. He served as Chair of the IEEE Hungary Section from 2017 to 2024 and is the founding chair of the IEEE Control Systems Hungary Chapter. He is also a member of IEEE SMC, EMBS, and CS, has chaired the IEEE SMC Hungary Chapter since 2015, and is a member of the IFAC Technical Committee on Biomedical Engineering Systems (TC 8.2) and the IFAC Technical Committee on Control Education (TC 9.4). His recognitions include the Zsámbék Pro Urbe Award in 2021 and the Dennis Gabor Award in 2022. Since 2024, he has been a member of the Board of Governors of IEEE SMC. Since 2025, he has served as President of the John von Neumann Computer Society. Since 2024, he has also been Vice President of the Hungarian Rectors’ Conference. He has received honorary doctorates from the Politehnica University of Timișoara (2022), the Technical University of Košice (2022), Partium Christian University (2023), and the Slovak University of Technology (2024). He has also been appointed Honorary Professor at Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (2022) and Tashkent Institute of Chemical Technology (2023). Since 2019, he has served as Rector of Óbuda University.