Curriculum vitae

Applied AI, entrepreneurship, software engineering

Since 2022
AI consultant
2016-2021
Principal investigator, Romanian Institute of Science and Technology
2011-2016
Founder & CEO, Epistemio
2000-2004
Founder & CEO, Arxia

Scientific research

2016-2021
Principal investigator, Romanian Institute of Science and Technology
2007-2010
Principal investigator, Center for Cognitive and Neural Studies (Coneural)
2004-2005
Research scientist, Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics (LIRA-Lab), University of Genova, Italy (Project RobotCub)
2002
Research intern, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Laboratory for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition (supervisor: Jun Tani), Tokyo, Japan
2000
Research consultant, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Internet Ecologies Group (supervisor: Bernardo Huberman), California, USA
1999
Research intern, Paris VI (Jussieu) University, Laboratoire des Milieux Desordonnés et Heterogenes (supervisor: Serge Galam), Paris, France
1997-1998
Student, Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Physics (supervisor: Zoltán Néda), Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Research management

Since 2009
President, Romanian Institute of Science and Technology
2002-2010
Director, Center for Cognitive and Neural Studies (Coneural)

Science policy

2009-2011
Personal advisor to the minister, Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports of Romania
Since 2023
Member, Romania's National Council for Artificial Intelligence Science and Ethics
2022
Personal advisor to the minister, Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization of Romania
2021
Senior expert, European Union’s High Level Advisers’ Mission in Moldova
2006-2009
Secretary of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis and Development of Romanian Science and Education Policies
2005-2006
Contributor to the Romanian National Strategy for Research, Development and Innovation for 2007-2013
2002-2006
Ad Astra association of Romanian scientists: co-founder (2002), co-president (2002-2003), president (2003-2005), executive director (2005-2006)

Education

2002-2009
PhD (summa cum laude), Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; advisor: Dumitru (Dan) Dumitrescu; thesis: Learning in spiking neural networks; research performed at the Center for Cognitive and Neural Studies (Coneural)
2000-2001
Master in Cognitive Science, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales / Paris VI (Jussieu) University / École Polytechnique / École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
(interrupted for financial reasons)
1998-2000
École Normale Supérieure de Cachan (currently École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay), Department of Physics. Magistere de Physique of Paris XI University (currently Université Paris-Saclay) at Orsay, France
1995-1998
Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Physics, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
1991-1995
Tiberiu Popoviciu Computer Science High School, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Other courses and qualifications

2005
Brainbench certified as IT Manager
2001
International summer school in Cognitive Science, Central and East European Center for Cognitive Science, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
2000
Advanced course in Computational Neuroscience, International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy
1996
Advances in computer simulations, Bolyai College, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
1993
Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, CT, USA

Reviewer for:

European Commission; Swiss National Science Foundation; The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; CNMP (Romania); Neural Computation; PLoS Computational Biology; Adaptive Behavior; IEEE Transactions in Neural Networks and Learning Systems; Brain Research; Neurocomputing; International Joint Conference for Neural Networks (IJCNN); IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL); IEICE International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA)