I’ve never regretted becaming a “string puller”

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In our series about the early motivations of the Faculty’s teachers, now the ball is in Dr. Szabolcs Rózsa’s court. Szabolcs is the head of Department of Geodesy and Surveying, and he talks about the starting of his career.

Not a friend encouragement or a parental sample led him to geodesy, but a failed high school preliminary exam. 

“I became a civil engineer indirectly thanks to an unsuccessful bilingual high school preliminary. I had a little less percentage than it was necessary, but then I got an offer from another bilingual high school, but it was a hydraulic engineering and water management school. From there, it could have led a straight path to hydraulic engineering career, but it did not happen. First, not the vocational subjects but physics caught me. I went to competitions and my teacher wanted me to become a physicist. But geodesy was among my professional subjects, and I fell in love with it, so it was clear that I choose being a land surveyor. In the last year of the high school, my physics teacher kidded me that I’ll be a “string puller”. During my university years I realized that interest in physics and the complex perspective given by that, could be really useful as a surveyor. So first I mostly interested in the research part of geodesy and I have never regretted not becaming a physicist. After university studies I started immediately a PhD training thanks to my interest in research. At the end of this, I was not sure about the future, and financial issues were also included in the viewpoints. Fortunately I had an opportunity to go to the University in Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Germany. It was my first academic workplace, I became a scientific associate in an international project. I worked previously in the industry as a PhD, but that was my first real job. I stayed there three and a half years. It was a big international project, dealt with the examination of earthquake endangered vulnerability of the Rhine trench, and the establishment of an international research network was also among the program’s aims. Educating each other was also a part of the project, but we did not have to teach any students. I dealt with GPS motion tests, measurement and data processing. At the end of the project, professor Ádám (Dr. József Ádám university professor), the onetime head of the department offered me a position. First I worked as a researcher, then I continued as a lecturer and later I stepped forward. I interested in teaching from the first few years of the university, I used to explain the curriculum to other students. It became important besides my commitment to research, and I think we could give the most advanced knowledge to our students if we receive new information as a researcher.

We asked Dr. Szabolcs Rózsa choose someone among his colleagues, who will tell his/her career starting story. Szabolcs have chosen Dr. Nándor Liegner, so his story coming soon.