Mihaela Ungureanu

To be a Fulbrighter – the experience of a Romanian woman scientist

Since I decided to do a research work, after my graduation at Electronics and Telecommunication Faculty, Politehnica University of Bucharest, in 1995, I always dreamed about getting in contact with famous scientists, and that really happened when winning the Fulbright Senior Research Award in 2006. After a strong competition, I was among the finalists and I had the opportunity to work with one of the best scientists in Biomedical Engineering, Prof. Nithis Thakor, from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD, USA and with his research team.

Although I was really prepared to experience the best from the professional point of view, I was so impressed by the achievements of his group, by the working style and the educational system there: hard working students, willing to do a research work in the framework of research grants, under the supervision of PhD holders; the “family” structure within the research group (PhD holders supervising PhD students, who take care about master students, who in turn are taking care about the integration and the evolution of the BSc students); tough, strict and very professional rules for promoting within the higher education system; exploratory research projects on the border of science fiction, always finished with high impact factor journal publications and international patents. The Fulbright fellowship offered me the chance to be not only integrated in such a high-performance research team, but also to continue this collaboration after finishing the project, no matter where I will be engaged (a common research project, funded by National Science Foundation – NSF is planned).