The Board of Trustees issued the call for applications in autumn 2002 and published it in the bulletins of HTE and OPAKFI, on the internet, and on the notice boards of educational institutions. The competition was open to graduates — primarily engineers and physicists — submitting a summary of their independent work, articles published in field-specific journals, or a new paper as the submitted work. Applicants could hold other degrees as well, but their activity had to fall within the field of acoustics.
The priority topic areas of the competition announced in 2002 were the processing of sound information in electroacoustics, and the latest results of research and development relating to sound quality.
In 2002, the Dénes Huszty Memorial Prize consisted of a memorial plaque and a cash prize of 100,000 HUF.
A total of six applications were received by the stated deadline. Following the two applications of the previous year, this reflects the growing interest in the Foundation's work.
The applications were assessed by an appointed review committee. The chair of the committee was Dr. András Illényi, Associate Professor, Chair of the Foundation's Board of Trustees; its members were Dr. Gyula Sallai, Department Head and Professor, Dr. Géza Gordos, Professor, and Dr. Ferenc Takács, retired Associate Professor.
The Board of Trustees decided to award one prize under the 2002 competition.
The Foundation's prize is open to professionals who have already graduated or are currently completing their thesis. Since several student applications were received this year, the Board of Trustees established a Certificate of Merit for university students, which rewards the most outstanding student submission of the given competition year.
The Foundation has now awarded the competition prize for the second time. The ceremonial prize-giving took place on 11 February 2003.
Taking the reviews into account, the Board of Trustees decided to award the 2002 Dénes Huszty Prize, on the basis of the 2002 competition, to Péter Olaszi, Chartered Electrical Engineer.
The most outstanding student applicant, György Várallyay Jr., fourth-year electrical engineering student, received a Certificate of Merit in recognition of his work.
Péter Olaszi submitted as his competition work his PhD dissertation entitled "Hungarian text-to-speech conversion: language models, algorithms and their implementation", which, as it happened, he defended with a 100 per cent approval rate in the days following the submission of his application. The work summarises the research results Péter Olaszi achieved over the previous ten years in the field of artificial speech generation, among which his internationally recognised contributions to the development of acoustic element databases for text-to-speech readers and to the improvement of sound quality deserve particular mention. The application submitted is exemplary in every respect and worthy of the memory of Dénes Huszty. » Curriculum vitae of Péter Olaszi
György Várallyay Jr. submitted as his competition work his Students' Scholarly Circle (TDK) paper "Acoustic analysis of infant cries", which took first place at BME in 2002 and is eligible for entry in the national TDK competition. Under the guidance of his consultants, the paper summarises the findings of his past eighteen months of research, which have also earned recognition at several international conferences. The work is characterised by the careful and structured documentation of its multi-faceted approach. Although he has not yet completed his university studies, his submission meets the formal requirements.