I was born in Sighetu Marmatiei, the picturesque capital of Maramures (Northern Transylvania), within yards from the Ukrainian borderline. Sighet, as the name says ("Island" in Hungarian), is a place surrounded by natural beauty and a rich cultural heritage from different nationalities (Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians) that coexisted here throughout the centuries. Here I followed the courses of the top local high school (the National College Dragos Voda) and got my Baccalaureate degree with a major in Computer Science. In 2001, I got my BS in Economics at the West University in the city of Timisoara, followed by a MS in Strategic Management at the neighboring Technical University in 2002. Afterward I have worked in Romania, both in industry (international commerce, advertising and economist) and the non-governmental sector (data analysis, volunteer work). Both of these experiences have shaped decisively my choice for graduate education towards RPI's PhD program in Economics, a program that combines two fields (Technological Change and Ecological Economics) that deal with some global challenges we are facing today.

In order to gain more insights insights on issues related to my proposed dissertation topic I have participated in other academic endeavors outside RPI. During the time spent in Great Barrington as a Summer Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, I focused on learning about the dual background (economics and law) of property rights, exploring the historical and international role of IPR for development. My participation in two European research networks of excellence (PRIME and DIME) and one global community on innovation (GLOBELICS) gave me the opportunity to present my work internationally and become linked worldwide with top scholars in this field. The Advanced Study Program at the Kiel Institute for World Economics was an intensive study and research program that provided me some of the latest tools in International Economics policy research that I have applied to my own research. Overall, all these events endowed me with both a good network of friends and new knowledge  about the research field I am in, that otherwise would have been difficult to achieve. For all these, I am very grateful.

Thanks to generous support from the Cournot Center (Paris France) I am able to spend a year at MIT Sloan School of Management as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate, working with Dr. Fiona Murray and Dr. Scott Stern. My current research agenda includes analysis of technological alliances in mature industries, multinational entry choices in foreign markets and the effects of mergers and acquisitions on firms' performance. In the future I intend to further broaden my research to a set of related topics (environmental innovation, entrepreneurship and innovation networks), methodologies (social network analysis and stochastic frontier models) and data sources (CIS and PATSTAT).