Sustainability and Innovation

Professor Remus PRICOPIE,

Rector of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), Bucharest, Romania.

Remus PRICOPIE served as Minister of National Education from December 2012 to December 2014. His activity within the Romanian Ministry of National Education began in 1996, and includes positions such as Spokesperson, Secretary General and Deputy Minister – (Secretary of State) for Higher Education, International Relations and Teacher Training. Professor Pricopie is a communication professor and Rector of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), Bucharest, since March 2012. He holds a PhD in Political Science at SNSPA and is a Millennium Fulbright alumnus. His educational background includes a rich international experience especially in the United States of America and European Union. Dr. Remus Pricopie has been Chair of the Task Force on Fostering and Building Human Capital (FBHC) of the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and President of the Board of Directors of the Romanian-US Fulbright Commission, to name just a few of the significant activities of representation he carried out during his professional career. The activity of Remus Pricopie encompasses trans-disciplinary research in the areas of higher education management, internationalization of higher education, public communication, public participation and collaborative public management.

Bogdan-Gruia IVAN,

Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitisation, Romania

Victor NEGRESCU,

Victor NEGRESCU is a Member of the European Parliament, Vice-President of the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), being part of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. 

Victor Negrescu has been the rapporteur of the European Parliament for the report on Shaping Digital Education Policy and an active promotor of the allocation of 10% for quality and inclusive education of the National Recovery and Resilience Facilities, as well as 2% to the

cultural and creative sector. He managed to obtain in this regard the support of the Budgets Committee members and integrated that in the official position of the European Parliament.

In his activity as MEP, Victor Negrescu strongly advocates for consistent investments in education, culture, digitalization and youth, by Member States and the European Commission. He is the winner of the MEP Award 2015 for Digital Agenda and the MEP with the most significant pilot projects, generating in both mandates initiatives that go up to more than 80 million euros in the fields of entrepreneurship, education, innovation, digitalization, health, culture and media.

Manuela CATRINA

Manuela CATRINA has a background in mathematics, computer science, cybernetics. She has teaching experience in computer science at the German high school „Samuel von Brukenthal” in Sibiu and „Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu.  

In the early 2000s, Ms Catrina had the first opportunity to join the high levels of government as advisor for the Romanian Prime Minister, after which she continued as parliamentary advisor for Romania’s Chamber of Deputies. Since 2013, she has been leading the Ovidiu Sincai European School, one of the Social Democratic Institute Ovidiu Sincai’s key projects. 

As Secretary of State since 2017, she contributed to the complex preparations for Romania’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Her mandate includes broader aspects as well as more specialized areas of the Digital Agenda - such as cybersecurity, AI and robotics, also promoting women in tech. In addition to handling legislative files stemming from EU’s Digital Agenda within the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council, she also coordinates a number of high-level national groups tasked with ensuring the security and resilience of Romania’s IT and telecommunications infrastructure.

Professor Constantin BRĂTIANU,

Title of presentation: Strategic Thinking

Constantin BRATIANU is Professor Emeritus of Strategic Management and Knowledge Management, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. He is founding editor of the international journals Management & Marketing, and Management Dynamics in the Knowledge Economy.  He delivered courses as a Visiting Professor in universities from USA, Japan, Egypt, Austria, Portugal, Poland, and Hungary. He is a full member of the Academy of Romanian Scientists. He is the President of the International Association for Knowledge Management  (IAKM), founded at Padua University, Italy. He published over 50 books and book chapters and over 200 papers in international journals and Proceedings of international conferences. He is listed by Stanford University in the top 2% of most cited scientists in the world. His academic interests are: knowledge dynamics, knowledge management, intellectual capital, strategic thinking and strategic management.

Professor Vasile BALTAC,

Title of presentation: The Digital Divide Persists: A Resilience and Complexity Perspective on Smart Cities

Vasile BALTAC is professor of eGovernment at Faculty of Public Administration, SNSPA (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration), member of the boards of ECDL Foundation, Ireland and LanguageCert, UK. He is the coordinator of SoftNet Group, an IT venture more that is more than 20 years old.

Professor Lasse BERNTZEN,

Title of presentation: Blockchain in the Smart City

Lasse BERNTZEN is a professor in Information Systems at University of South-Eastern Norway. His research has focused on the digital society, e-government, e-participation, and "smart cities". His research examines how cities can make better decisions by using data, analytics, and visualization. He is currently doing research on how Internet-of-Things and big data can be used in some of the subdomains of smart cities, such as "smart traffic", "smart public transportation", "smart parking", "environmental monitoring", "smart waste management", "smart energy" and, "crime prevention".

Professor Adrian FLOREA,

Title of presentation: Digital green transition - a must for sustainable growth in 5.0 society

Adrian FLOREA (AF) obtained his MSE (1998) and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the ’Politehnica’ University of Bucharest, Romania (2005). Since 2016 he is Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the ’Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu (LBUS), Romania, and obtained the habilitation in 2022. Adrian is an active researcher in the fields of High Performance Processor Design and Simulation, Dynamic Branch and Value Prediction. He has worked over 23 years in interdisciplinary national and international research projects dealing with issues such as optimization problems in different engineering domains (microprocessors systems, suspension design and reliability, energy efficiency in buildings), embedded systems with applicability in Smart City (smart parking, urban mobility, smart traffic, smart agriculture), human capital evaluation, developing collaborative platform for knowledge transfer between academia and industry, creating digital tools for supporting communities of practice, mobile computing. He has published over 9 (didactic and scientific) books and 107 scientific papers in some prestigious journals (ISI Web of Science) and international top conferences in Romania, USA, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Slovenia, Korea, Latvia, Spain, Poland etc. He received “Tudor Tănăsescu” Romanian Academy Award 2005, for the book entitled ‘Microarchitectures simulation and optimization’ (in Romanian) and “Ad Augusta Per Angusta” Award for young researcher, received from LBUS in June 2007, for special results obtained in scientific research. Since 2012 he is HiPEAC affiliate member and, since 2020 he is ACM Senior member. He was researcher in the EU’s H2020 innovation programme under grant agreement no 731724, “Infrastructure and integrated tools for personalized learning of reading skill – iRead” and he was the technical coordinator of the Erasmus+ KA2 strategic project “The FoF-Designer: Digital Design Skills for Factories of the Future” (2019-2021) - DigiFoF. Since 2019 professor Florea is leading the HPI Knowledge Transfer Institute at LBUS and organized during 2020-2023 four editions of the event - Sibiu Innovation Days (SID https://events.ulbsibiu.ro/innovationdays/). SID represents an event born from the desire to bring together all the forces gravitating around the concept of innovation through digitalization, aiming to strengthen collaboration between all stakeholders - academia, companies and policy makers, while improving the way we understand and use the innovative services available in Transylvania and the Sibiu region in particular.

Title of presentation: Artificial intelligence in strategy

Professor dr. habil. Florina PINZARU is Dean of the Faculty of Management of the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), Bucharest, Romania, where she teaches Management, Organizational Design in the Digital Age, and Strategic Marketing.

Florina Pinzaru holds a PhD in Economics and International Business from the Bucharest Business University ASE, a MA in Strategic Marketing, a BA in Economics and International Business from the same university, a BA in Communication and Public Relations from the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration SNSPA and she was Visiting Student at Sciences-Po Paris. She is habilitated to coordinate PhD thesis in Management and teaches regularly abroad, being Visiting Professor at ISIT Paris, France and at the University of Siedlce, Poland.

Florina Pinzaru has more than 10 years of experience as consultant and trainer in Management and Marketing for important Romanian enterprises and multinational corporations in furniture, energy and utilities.

Professor Andy PUȘCĂ,

Title of presentation: Electronic person. The civil liability of robots with artificial intelligence

Andy PUȘCĂ is the President of Administration Board of “Danubius” University. In this capacity, he ensures the fulfillment of the mission of the higher education institution to generate and transfer knowledge to the society, taking care, at the same time, of the development of actions regarding the national and international cooperation of the higher education institution. Consequently, Dr. Andy Pușcă makes decisions on the university’s patrimony and ensures the management and the protection of the resources of the university. Previously, he served as Rector of the institution.

Dr. Andy Pușcă is the Vice-President of AUAP (the Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific), being formerly Member of the Executive Board. Concomitantly, he is Vice-president of the American association AGAUC (the Association for the Global Advancement of Universities and Colleges), President of HECSI (Higher Education Consortium for Social Innovation), Vice-president of Danubius Academic Consortium, as also President of a number of Danubian associations as: “Romanian River Transport Cluster” or “The Lower Danube IT&C Cluster”.

Former Coordinator of the Commission for Social Issues and Relation with the Unions for the National Council of Rectors, Dr. Andy Pușcă has a broad expertize in European projects management. Furthermore, he practices law.

Doctor in Law of the Romanian Academy, Andy Pușcă started his academic career within the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA) in Bucharest, where he graduated, as valedictorian, from the Faculty of Public Administration. Also as a valedictorian he graduated from the Law Faculty of “Danubius” University. Dr. Andy Pușcă was Senior Lecturer within more renowned higher education institutions as SNSPA, The Police Academy “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” or the National Institute of Magistracy, being, at present, Associate Professor at the Law Faculty of “Danubius” University.

Dr. Andy Pușcă took intensive piano lessons and is passionate about reading, going to theatre, movies, trips and music.