Program - Secţiunea de ştiinţe exacte şi ale naturii

Workshop - Integrarea în Zona de Cercetare Europeană, Bucureşti, 25-26 octombrie 2002

Rezumate:

1. Change: a condition for European integration
   Cristina VIDULESCU
   Carol Davila University of Medicine, Bucharest

I would like to discuss on some conditions needed for European integration of Romanian research. Changes are needed in the Romanian legislation related to research funding. Funding should be used more efficiently, through more independence of project coordinators. Changes in the mentalities regarding the social and intellectual statute of the researchers are also needed. Intellectual and moral values should be recognized and valued, with social and economical consequences.

 

2. Compatibility of Romanian standards of excellence with the European ones

Maria Luiza FLONTA
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Biology

 

3. Integration - an option for the survival of research and researchers in Romania

Roxana BOJARIU
National Institute for Meteorology and Hidrology, Bucharest

Environmental sciences, by their nature, imply integrative approaches and depend essentially on the efficiency of international cooperation. Problems like climatic variability and predictibility transcend borders. The opening over the space of the European Union meant for us, at the beginning of the 90’s, the chance of relancing an area of research which lagged behind as a consequence of scientific isolation. Informative opportunities were as important as the formative ones. Is competitive science possible in Romania? The existence of the European programmes offers, at least theoretically, this possibility. This presentation will try to deal with the practical aspects of this question from the perspective of a participant in the Framework Programmes initiated by the European Comission in the last decade.

 

4. Scientific research in Romania and international partnership - necesity, challenges and difficulties to overcome
   Nicolae CONSTANTIN
   “Politehnica” University, Bucharest

 

5. The integration of the Institute for Space Sciences in the European Research Area
   Dumitru HASEGAN
   Institute for Space Sciences, Bucharest

The research activity of the Institute for Space Sciences is devoted to fundamental and applied space research. By 1990 it attended already to space experiments carried out onboard 22 satellites and space stations in INTERCOSMOS Program as well as to many ground experiments. After 1990 the institute enters in international cooperations with institutes and universities from Western Europe such as Italy, France, Germany Sweden, and Spain on the Memorandum of Agreement basis. This affords the institute to participate to space experiments carried out on the satellites launched by European Space Agency ESA or to ground experiments dedicated to both astrophysics and particle physics. These are very good opportunities for the Romanian researchers to get access and to work together with European colleagues in major experiments. As a direct result the number of scientific publications significantly increases, both in international scientific journals and at international conferences.

In 2001 the European Space Agency launched the Program for European Cooperating States – PECS, specifically addressed to Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Hungary. It is necessary for Romania to respond to this initiative as soon as possible since it is a very good opportunity for Romanian research and industry to integrate in European activity at the required standards for increasing competitivity.

 

6. Real Enlargement and Extended ERA ?
   Vlad AVRIGEANU
   University of Bucharest

   The present scientific environment and the minimum conditions that are supposed to bring consistent contributions of Romanian R&D within European projects are being discussed. These comments are based on the author’s work since 1999 within the Romanian unit of the EURATOM (Fusion) Association, as well as on the experience of the project IDRANAP under the EC/FP5 "Support for Centres of Excellence".

   The main point concerns R&D European-added value which should be "made in Romania" although it hasn’t been taken into consideration whether the work of R&D is still possible at European standards within Romanian institutes. Since IDRANAP has been the only successful proposal of units within the Romanian Ministry for Education and Research (MEC), the IFIN-HH experience may have a particular significance in this respect. Actually in this case the 'excellence' does not characterize the working conditions at our site (the well-known Institute of Atomic Physics, founded by Horia Hulubei at Bucharest-Magurele) but the level of results that have been obtained until now by our staff. This is the reason why our working conditions, formerly below worldwide standard but today even worse, should be replenished by the FP5 support of the IDRANAP project in the first place. Otherwise, the larger working stages of the IDRANAP visitors will be mainly formal and less efficient while making obvious the difference between the appraisal of the local and the foreign scientists.

   The last of the above-mentioned features may also be pointed out as one of the main reasons of the "brain drain" especially among the youths. Not only the normal learning and research conditions are lacking but it is also absent the usual worldwide consideration given to a specific activity foreseen to bias the society progress . Therefore, no real ERA enlargement in our region will be possible if special attention will not be given to proper or even minimum material and social R&D framework .

   Moreover, it must be emphasised that neither the enlargement actions (which are already in due course within EC institutes) will reach their final aim of preservation and development of knowledge and capabilities at CEEC institutes if in the meantime these will collapse. Given the situation if ERA is to be extended over the candidate countries the enlargement actions performed both at CEEC and EC research institutes and regulatory bodies should be related and well known in real time.

    

7. The Romanian research in mathematics: a solid link with Europe
   Radu PURICE
   Institute of Mathematics "Simion Stoilow" of the Romanian Academy
   
   
   The "Simion Stoilow" Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy (shorthand IMAR) created in 1949 represents one of the most significant centres of the Romanian mathematical life. In 2000 it has been elected as an European Centre of Excellence by the European Commission (the Research Directorate General) after a competition addressed to Central and East European countries, through which 34 Institutes (4 from Romania) out of 184 have been selected. In this quality IMAR has signed a 3 years Research programme, called EURROMMAT, supported by the EC (a total of 850.000 euro) for the period March 2001 - February 2004. As part of this Programme, IMAR has organized a Centre for Advanced Studies in Mathematics that has organized until now 4 International Conferences, 3 Workshops, 8 lecture series of more then 1 month each and more than 15 research fellowships (for periods between 1 and 11 months) for young mathematicians from EU or Associated countries. In the same time IMAR has participated at 3 European Networks: EAGER, EDGE and QmPhy. In 2001 IMAR has signed a cooperation agreement with 4 Institutes of Mathematics form Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland and together they have proposed 5 letters of intent for participation in the Framework Programme 6. The research Groups in IMAR have bilateral cooperation programs with several European research institutes.

   The aim of our presentation will be a short description of these programs with some of their achievements and projects for the future.
   

 

8. WINMAN - a research project financed by the EU
   Radu TUCHILA
   Felix Telecom, Bucharest
   
   The WINMAN (WDM and IP Network Management) Project is an EC research project with the aim of designing, implementing and in-field testing an Inter-domain network management system.
   
   The overall WINMAN aim is to offer an integrated network management solution, which is capable to provide end-to-end IP connectivity services derived from Service Level Agreements (SLAs). WINMAN will capture the requirements, and define and specify an open, distributed, and scalable management architecture for IP connectivity services on hybrid transport networks (ATM, SDH and WDM). The requirements will include and the architecture will support multi-vendor, multi-technology environments and evolution scenarios for end-to-end IP transport from IP / ATM / SDH / WDM towards IP/WDM. WINMAN will consist of an optimized architecture and systems for integrated network management of IP connectivity services over hybrid transport networks.
   
   The WINMAN Project started in July 2000. The initial WINMAN consortium was constituted by 11 companies from 6 countries (Lucent Technologies - Netherlands, Telefonica I+D and Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya - Spain, Portugal Telecom Inovacao - Portugal, Helenic Telecommunications Organisation, OTE Consulting, National Technical University of Athens and Ellemedia Technologies - Greece, University College London - UK, TTI Telecom and RAFAEL- Israel) in which there are 4 service providers, 4 companies representing the industry and 3 universities.
   
   Felix Telecom joined the WINMAN consortium in December 2001 by proposing to add an Activation System, which is a CRM component, as a new dimension for the management integration. The integration of Felix Telecom in the WINMAN consortium was made under the EU thematic priority IST-2001-8.1.6, which refers to the integration in the European research area of the research of the newly associated states.
   
   An important characteristic of the IST RTD projects is that for all the commercial companies the participation is based on shared cost, which means that EU will finance maximum 50% of the expenses. This makes this kind of research projects to be strongly connected to the commercial development needs and tendencies, characteristics, which, in my opinion, are not very present in the Romanian research / research legislation.
   
   
   
   
   
9. Research and development - a priority for the High Technical Schools
   Gheorghe ATANASIU
   “Politehnica” University, Timisoara

In the new context of knowledge age, the high education is facing a series of strong pressures, which claims new structures. Joining the general and the professional education with the long life instruction is the requirement for the actual universities. The modern instruction in the engineering domain has two aspects today: one concerns the training of high level technical personnel, who should be endowed with the necessary ability to exploit the present technology and the other has the goal the creation of an elite research personnel that will take over the scientific development of the new technique and technology. The Humboldian principle of the unity between research and teaching (Einheit von Forschung und Lehre) must be nowaday the core of the actual high technical education.

Last trends in electrical and electronics engineering technology are expressed by adopting the “open pedagogy”, with an increase for the science and technology in specific domain. In this context the interest of our faculties (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) is extended in various professional domain as: power and energy, industrial electronics, solid state area, transportation, test and measurement, engineering software tools, computers, communication, consumer and medical electronics, aero space and military area and finally environment problems.

The new social contract for university research must be build up on: generating new ideas, new practices, new products, and finally new business. The strictly professional instruction, towards the target profile, will be realized in co-operation with the industrial societies, with similar objectives. The research activity, enlarged with the participation of graduate students, must be taken for the social needs, being a support component of the education process.

In this context the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities (2002-2006) must be a goal for the Romanian universities.

 

10. Scoala Normala Superioara Bucharest - a concrete project against brain drain
    Razvan DIACONESCU
    National Institute for Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest; Scoala Normala Superioara, Bucharest
    
    I will present the SNSB, an institution that complements the mainstream Romanian academic system. Its main goals are to offer to our best students professional and material condition in order to motivate them to continue their studies in Romania and also to orient them towards research.
    My talk will have three parts. First the motivation, in which I will also present the close relationship with the topic of the present conference. In the second part I will shortly describe the project, and in the last I will present the problems we have encountered in realizing it.