Curriculum vitae

I. Personal data

Born: 11 September 1980, Sîngeorgiu de Pădure, Mureş county, Romania
Address: Str. Mecanicilor nr. 50, Cluj-Napoca
Telephone: +40-745-217623
Employment: Researcher, Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Physics, Hungarian Physics Institute; Romanian Institute of Science and Technology
Work-address: Str. M. Kogalniceanu nr. 1., room 223, Cluj-Napoca
E-mail: [email protected]

II. Studies

1995–1999: Mikes Kelemen High School, Sfîntu Gheorghe, Romania
1999–2003: B.Sc. in Physics with Minor in Physics Education, Faculty of Physics, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
2003–2004: M.Sc. in Computational Physics, Physics Department, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
2004–2008: PhD-student at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Information Technology, Budapest, Hungary (scientific supervisor: prof. dr. Tamás Roska) in collaboration with the Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Physics, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (scientific supervisor: prof. dr. Zoltán Néda). Title of PhD-thesis: Applications of Cellular Neural/Nonlinear Networks in Physics.

III. Scientific area: computational and statistical physics, interdisiciplinary physics, network theory

Research problems:

• analyizing and modeling the interareal cortical network of the brain
• nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory: solving optimization problems with chaotic dynamical systems
• network theory: properties of complex networks, citation networks, clustering algorithms
• optimization problems: constraint satisfaction problems, correlation clustering
• cellular neural networks, CNN computing and its applications in physics

IV. Participation in research projects and grants

2002-2003: member of the Sociological phase transitions research program, BCPL, Bergen, Norway.

2003-2004: member of the Physics of complex systems research program, Sapientia Fund’s Research Institute, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

August 2003: research scholarship at KFKI, RMKI-ELFO, Budapest, Hungary, supervisor: Dr. Szabó György.

2005-2007: member of the Modeling self-organizing nanostructures research program at the Babeş-Bolyai University, financed by the Romanian National University Research Council (C.N.C.S.I.S.), Romania

2008-2011: Postdoctoral Fellowship. September 1., 2008 – September 1., 2011, University of Notre Dame, Department of Physics, Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications, Indiana, USA.

2012-2014: Researcher in a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship, “Chaotic Cellular Neural/Nonlinear Networks for Solving Constraint Satisfaction”, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IIF-299915, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

2011-2014:  Principal Invetsigator in a Starting Research Grant funded by the Romanian Government, PN-II-RU-TE-2011-02-121, “A continuous-time approach to constraint satisfaction: optimization hardness as transient chaos”

2012-2016: Principal investigator in a Colaborative Applicative Research Porgram, PN-II-PT-PCCA-2011-3.2-0895 “Improving scientific evaluation through analysis of scientific networks”.

V. Teaching activity

Formerly at the Faculty of Physics, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania:

• Evolution of physics and knowledge seminar (B.Sc. level, compulsory, 1st semester)

• Numerical methods in Physics seminar (B.Sc. level, compulsory, 2nd semester)

• Quantum Mechanics I, seminar (B.Sc. level, compulsory, 2nd semester)

2004-2005: Nonlinear Dynamical Systems seminar, Péter Pázmány Catholic University, Romania 

2011: Teacher of a Graduate Level Course – Introduction to Network Science, University of Notre Dame, IN, USA

VII. Scientific honours (prizes and research scholarships)

2001: 1st prize at the Scientific Conference for Transylvanian Students, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

2001: 2nd prize at the XXV. Scientific Conference for Students in Hungary, Budapest.

2002-2003: Performance research scholarship of the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

2003: The Junior Bolyai János Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, for research results obtained during B.Sc. studies
August, 2003: research scholarship at the KFKI, RMKI-ELFO, Budapest, Hungary, advisor: Dr. György Szabó.

March-July, 2007: Erasmus scholarship at the Catholic University of Leuven, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, ESAT, Leuven, Belgium, supervisor: Dr. Prof. Sabine Van Huffel.

2011: Award of Young Researchers received from the Regional Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Kolozsvár

2014: UNESCO-L’Oreal Fellowship of “Women in Science” in Romania

2015: Constantin Miculescu Award in the Physics Section of the Romanian Academy of Sciences

VIII. Language skills

• Hungarian - mother tongue
• Romanian - fluent
• English - fluent
• German - beginner