Zane Ball, Corporate Vice President at Intel Corporation and a former research student at SZTE visited Szeged last week. Despite his busy schedule, we had the opportunity to ask him about the time he spent in Szeged, his memories, and his impressions now that he returned.
Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you ended up at the University of Szeged?
It goes back a long time to when I was a student at Rice University in Houston, Texas. My professor for my Ph.D. had a collaboration with Gábor Szabó and the institute here, and in the frames of different research projects they visited Rice several times. That’s how I got to know Gábor. He was a very impressive physicist and all the students at Rice just loved him. He was not just a great scientist and mentor, but he was also a great friend. I remember he played basketball with everyone and we all loved him.
I had a National Science Foundation Fellowship so I had the opportunity to study abroad. I could choose between going to Japan, to Germany, to the UK, or here. I wanted to work with Gábor, so eventually, I came here. That was almost 30 years ago, in 1994. I spent 6 months in Szeged doing research with excimer laser polymer interactions, working together with Béla Hopp. We published a couple of papers together. This research was a great opportunity for me to be in another country because I never left the United States before that.
How was your time in Szeged?
I had a lot of fun. There were quite a few foreign students here at that time from the Netherlands, and Germany for example and we had a little group of foreign students and we would have coffee and sweets every day at the Virág Cukrászda. I was also a big fan of rétes, I would eat that pastry every day at Hatos Rétes. For me, having lived only in the United States, it was kind of a mind-expanding experience. I met a lot of interesting people. Everyone was such a good host here. I loved everything, the people, the food… I had a great time.
Zane Ball with Zsolt Geretovszky at the SZTE Institute of Physics.
Do you have a favorite memory or anecdote from those days?
At the lab, every morning and afternoon there was a fixed time for “coffee club”. There was a group of people that would always come to our lab, but it’s been a long time and I’m not sure of whose lab it was, and they had this giant pot of water and an electric coil that they stuck in the water to boil it. And then we put instant coffee in it and all drank it together. So we had a 10-minute coffee club in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon. I loved the coffee club, it was a great social time for us.
Did you learn Hungarian?
Yes, I really wanted to learn the language. There was a Hungarian researcher at Rice University, called Csaba, he lived with his family in Houston and his wife tutored me. So when I came to Szeged I already could speak some Hungarian, but it was hard. And when I was here, the university had a Hungarian class for foreign students. We tried really hard and then when I tried to speak Hungarian to buy rétes for example, they were just laughing. At first, I didn’t understand it, I thought that it was impossible that I was speaking it so badly. But then it turned out that they just never heard a foreigner speak Hungarian before.
After you left Szeged, did you keep in touch with friends and colleagues from the university?
Yes. After my 6 months in Szeged, I returned to the States to finish my degree. My professor moved to Jena, Germany, and I also moved there for a year. Even Gábor came to Jena for a while and we had collaborations in the form of some joint research there as well.
After finishing my studies I went to work for Intel Corporation. I’ve been working for Intel for 27 years. But even during all that time, I’ve been occasionally keeping in touch to see what’s going on here in Szeged.
What brought you back?
When the ELI-ALPS institute opened, I read about it and I was really impressed so I reached out to Gábor to congratulate him on the achievement. He was encouraging me to visit but this was during the pandemic so I couldn’t come right away. This is actually my first trip to Europe since 2019.
Intel has a big research facility in Gdansk, Poland, and I have quite a few team members there so I was anxious to come. We just launched a new product, the 4th Generation Xion processor and we’ll be talking about it at the CloudFest in Germany next week. I will be one of the speakers at CloudFest so that was my excuse to come so to say. I contacted Gábor and we put together a visit.
This morning you visited the ELI-ALPS. How did you like what you saw?
Gábor gave me a tour of the facility. I’m truly impressed, I don’t think there’s any other laser facility like this in the world. The technology is amazing and it can be a resource for scientists from all over the world. Things have come a long way since I was here 30 years ago and I was really happy to see this progress. We had the idea that I could give a seminar while I’m here, so I gave a presentation this morning at ELI-ALPS about the semiconductor industry. There were a lot of really good questions from the staff.
What do you think about Szeged now?
The center of the city is still the same but of course, there’s been so much modernization. Clearly, the country has prospered a great deal in the last 30 years. I think Szeged is a thoroughly modern place. The ELI institute is a great example, I don’t know of a more advanced facility anywhere in the world. It’s very gratifying to see so much progress.
How long are you going to stay in Szeged?
I have two days here before I’m flying to Germany for the CloudFest Conference. We have some plans for the weekend, Béla will take me out to town and Gábor wants to take me to Ópusztaszer because I’ve never been there before.
SZTE-info
Photos by: Ádám Kovács-Jerney
