Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI), Romania

Description of organisation

UEFISCDI is a public entity of the Central Administration under the ultimate authority of Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport (MoERYS).

UEFISCDI was established in July 2010, based on the Governmental Ordinance nr. 74/2010 by merging three organisations with responsibilities for the management and administration of various programs, in the field of higher education, research, development and innovation.

UEFISCDI plays the role of executive agency for seven advisory councils of the MECTS with responsibilities in the fields of higher education, research, development and innovation.

UEFISCDI implements, under the supervision of its advisory councils, four out of the six programmes of the National Plan for Research, Development and Innovation 2007 2013 (PN II), i.e.: Human Resources (exploratory research), Ideas (exploratory research), Partnerships in Priority S&T Areas (applied research), Innovation (innovation and technology transfer).

Between December 2008 and November 2011, UEFISCDI implemented 6 Strategic Projects for Higher Education (funded through European Social Fund). Starting with December 2011 other 3 strategic projects are implementing for completion and consolidation of the results of the previous ones and the improvement of the Higher Education system in Romania.

Externally, UEFISCDI acts for the promotion of Romanian R&D and its integration in the international scientific community, by:

• Cooperating with similar organisations in Europe and worldwide

• Supporting to Romanian R&D actors to develop international partnerships

UEFISCDI is involved in 17 international projects, most of them under ERA NET Scheme/FP6 and FP7.

UEFISCDI has strategic partnerships & cooperation agreements with the following organisations:

• European Science Foundation – ESF

• Swiss National Science Foundation – SNSF

• L'Agence nationale de la recherche – ANR

• Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft –DFG

• National Science Foundation – NSF , USA

• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

UEFISCDI is member of different European associations (EARMA, EARTO), offers support to SMEs by EUREKA, EUROSTARS, and administrates the Romanian participation to the Joint Technology initiatives – JTI/JU (ENIAC, Artemis, Clean Sky, Fuel Cells, IMI).

Previous experience

Professor Ulieru's career spans over 25 years of leading international expertise in ICT enabled health technologies, which began with her PhD in Systems Diagnostics at Darmstadt University of Technology (1995) and is further attested by the following publications:

Mihaela Ulieru and Rene Doursat, Emergent Engineering: A Radical Paradigm Shift, International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communication Systems (IJAACS), Vol. 4, Nr. 1, 2011 Mihaela Ulieru and Dan Ionescu, Privacy and Security Shield for Health Information Systems (e Health), International Journal of Computer Systems Science and Engineering, (to appear January 2006).

Garrett Camp and Mihaela Ulieru, In Order – An Adaptive Visual Interface for eCollaboration, International Conference on Telework, August 29 31, 2006, Fredericton, NB, Canada Mihaela Ulieru, Maja Hadzic and Elizabeth Chang, Soft Computing Agents for e Health Applied to the Research and Control of Unknown Diseases, Information Science, Vol. 176/9 (on line since September 2005).

Maja Hadzic, Mihaela Ulieru and Elizabeth Chang, Ontology based Holonic Medical Diagnostic System for the Research and Control of New Epidemics, International Conference on Bioinformatics, Innsbruck, Austria, February

2005

Ulieru, M., Soft Computing Agents for e Health, Proceedings of NAFIPS 2004, June 28 30, 2004, Banff, Canada, pp. 116 121.

Ulieru, M. and Rizzi, M. A Cooperative Approach to the Development of Expert Knowledge Bases Applied to Define Standard of Care in Glaucoma, Proceedings of CoopIS 2003, Catania, Sicily, November 3 7, 2003, pp.

235 243, Springer Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS 2888.

Mihaela Ulieru, "Internet Enabled Soft Computing Holarchies for e Health Applications", in New Directions in Enhancing the Power of the Internet, (L.A. Zadeh and M. Nikravesh – Editors), pp. 131 166, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2003.

Mihaela Ulieru, Andrew C S Crichton, M. Rizzi and Cynthia Karanicolas "Using Soft Computing to Define Standards of Care in Glaucoma Monitoring", International Journal of Soft Computing: A Fusion of Foundations, Methodologies and Applications (Springer) ISSN 1432 7643,

2003

Mihaela Ulieru and Alexander Grabelkovsky, "Telehealth Approach to Glaucoma Progression Monitoring", International Journal of Information Theories and Applications 10(3), 2003, ISSN 1310 0513, pp. 326 330.

Mihaela Ulieru and Vladimir Grishin, "Pictorial Analysis: A Multi Resolution Data Visualisation Approach for Monitoring and Diagnosis of Complex Systems", Information Science, Volume 152/2003, pp.

1 24.

Ulieru, M and Geras, A., Emergent Holarchies for e Health Applications for e Health Applications – A Case in Glaucoma Diagnosis, Proceedings of IECON 2002 – 28th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, November 5 8, 2002, Seville, Spain, ISBN 0 7803 7475 4, pp.

2957 2962, (proceedings on CD Rom, IEEE Catalog Number 02CH37363.) Ulieru M. and Pogrzeba, G. Integrated Soft Computing Methodology for Diagnosis and Prediction with Application to Glaucoma Risk Evaluation, Proceedings of 6th IASTED International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, July 17 19, 2002, Banff, Canada, pp.

275 280, ISBN: 0 88986 346 6.

Mihaela Ulieru, "A Fuzzy Logic Based Computer Assisted Fault Diagnosis System" European Journal of Diagnosis and Supervision, Vol. 3, Num.

3/1994, pp. 405 441, ISSN 1166 3049.

Profile of staff members

Mihaela Ulieru is an expert in ICT enabled innovation at UEFISCDI and President of the IMPACT Institute for the Digital Economy which she spinned from her internationally praised work as the Canada Research Chair in Adaptive Information Infrastructures for the eSociety. Professor Ulieru is an expert in distributed intelligent systems, topic on which she is a frequent Keynote and Tutorial speaker as well as distinguished visiting professor. She founded the ICST IT Revolutions Forum and Conference series and the IEEE Industrial Informatics Community. She had numerous appointments on a wide range of scientific boards and councils, among which the Science Technology and Innovation Council of Canada, the Singapore ASTAR and on several EC FET Consortia among which PERADA (Pervasive Adaptation) and IPROMS (Innovative Production Machines and Systems). Professor Ulieru obtained her PhD (1995) in computational intelligence applied to systems diagnostics under the illustrious supervision of Professor Rolf Isermann at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. Her academic career started as Lecturer in Computer Science and Information Systems at Brunel University, London, UK. A postdoctoral fellowship (1997) with Prof. William Gruver in the Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics Group at Simon Fraser University brought her to Canada where she was awarded the Junior Nortel Industrial Research Chair at the University of Calgary in 1998.

Professor Adrian Curaj is the current Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on „Science and Innovation Policies" at the SNSPA National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania. He has a PhD in Control Engineering (1998) and graduated the EMBA program of the ASEBUSS Bucharest and University of Washington in Seattle Business School (2003).

He has been the General Director of the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding since 2010. Adrian Curaj was acting as the State Secretary for Research–President of the National Authority for Scientific Research, 2009 2010; Prime Minister Advisor for ICT, Science and Innovation, 2007 2008; Vice President of the National University Research Council, 2008 2009; Director of the Executive Agency for Research and Higher Education Funding, 2000 2007; Programme Director of the „Reform of the Romanian Higher Education and Research" Project cofunded by the World Bank and Romanian Government, 1995 2000.

Adrian Curaj was acting as the project manager of the Romanian Foresight in Science and Innovation, 2005 2006; Future of Romanian Higher Education – cluster of projects, 2008 2011; RIFI Research Infrastructures: Foresight and Impact – a FP7 project, 2009 2010.

He has been working as consultant with World Bank, UNESCO, UNIDO, UNDP and EC for studies in Tertiary Education, Science and Innovation, and Foresight. He acted as a Member of the PEOPLE Advisory Group – European Commission, 2007 2012; as an expert participating at the Task Force–Fostering and Building Human Capital of the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC); and as a member of the Bologna Followup Group BFUG, 2010 2012.

Adrian Curaj published books, reports, articles as editor/author/co author/group contributor (selection): "European Higher Education at the Crossroads Between the Bologna Process and National Reforms" Springer 2012, editor and co author; "Blueprint for Doing Foresight in Universities" Romanian Academy Publishing House 2011, editor; Helsinki Service Science Summit White Paper, 2009, co autor; "Looking Beyond the Endless Frontier" – European Science Foundation 2007, group contributor; Cross country study „Tertiary Education and Innovation System", WB, 2004, co author.

Five recent publications relevant to the project

Mihaela Ulieru and Rene Doursat, Emergent Engineering: A Radical Paradigm Shift, International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communication Systems (IJAACS), Vol. 4, Nr. 1, 2011

Mihaela Ulieru and Dan Ionescu, Privacy and Security Shield for Health Information Systems (e Health), International Journal of Computer Systems Science and Engineering, (to appear January 2006).

Garrett Camp and Mihaela Ulieru, In Order – An Adaptive Visual Interface for eCollaboration, International Conference on Telework, August 29 31, 2006, Fredericton, NB, Canada

Mihaela Ulieru, Maja Hadzic and Elizabeth Chang, Soft Computing Agents for e Health Applied to the Research and Control of Unknown Diseases, Information Science, Vol. 176/9 (on line since September 2005).