Doing Research Midnight in ROmania (DoReMi-RO) 2020 is the International Year of Sound, an area of high importance for science and technologies for all in modern society. Our team goal is to join the European Researchers’ Night event in Romania with this initiative, in order to emphasize both research activities and technological development mixed with sounds and music: DoReMi-RO. The promotion and dissemination of the research results among young people, in one day event, is at the same time welcome but also insufficient. For the moment the kids' curiosity will be sparked but on the next day they feel that everything is beautifully solved in science and there is not much left to do. Then, the research as a career might be unattractive. After a single successful evening, as the Night is, the event must be transformed into a new public challenge based on the well-known concept of collaborative engagement. Thus, the general objective of the project is to raise awareness on research results baked by experiments, involving the participants in a particular citizen science project whereby researchers and the public are working together. The collaborative process will take place before, during and after the Night event and aims to make the magnetic map of Romania. All together will use common smartphones to measure the magnetic field, throughout Romania. The anonymous collaborative public have to send us the measured data, along with the GPS coordinates, uploaded on an internet web-platform. DoReMi-RO event will be held in more than 15 cities, spread throughout entire Romanian territory, among which: Baia Mare, Brasov, Bucharest, Cluj, Constanta, Craiova, Iași, Pitesti, Timișoara, Sibiu and Suceava. All proposed activities are represented by various minds-on and open-air activities: hands-on experiments, debates about collaborative engagement types, games, quizzes, organized in an amusing and stimulated manner by real researchers.

PULSE-COM aims to explore technological breakthroughs developing and integrating a new class of Photo-Piezo-Actuators to open a radical new future technology. Our vision is based on the use of low cost photo-mobile polymer (PMP) films and a lead-free piezo-composite (PZL) to target their use in innovative new fields never before considered. Starting from phenomenological and modelling aspects of the composite materials, we will fabricate and experimentally characterize Photo-Piezo-Actuators (PMP-PZL) proof of concept devices. The project will address through an ambitious interdisciplinary research to the employment of proper materials and the appropriate optical strategies to increase and tune the absorption of the light and finally to increase the PMP devices efficiency. With the same target electromechanical models and innovative growth processes will guide the optimization of the piezocomposite to improve its performance, and thus its sensitivity when coupled with the PMP. The PMP-PZL device will be integrated into more complex opto-electronic systems through high-risk incremental research to achieve pioneering industrial implementation. Specifically, we target the realization of cutting-edge applications based on photo-activated Meso-scale machines as opto-switches and opto-microvalves, Reconfigurable Optics and Photoenergy Harvesting Systems. Our study can open a new window on the future development of light-driven nanomotors and their potential applications in different areas such as biomedical, environmental and nanoengineering fields.

The objective of LASIG-Twin is to create a networking collaboration between the Romanian National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR) and its Laboratory of Solid-State Quantum Electronics (ECS) and four other high renowned institutes from Germany, the UK and France, providing a unique opportunity for INFLPR and its partners to significantly increase their science excellence and visibility, technology innovation capacity and industrial exploitation capability in the fields of laser spark plug for fossil fuel efficient combustion fundamentals and applications. The project will focus on the key target actions of composing Teams of Excellence, an ambitious Training and Lecturing Program and the Roadmap for a future collaboration, organizing short term Staff Exchanges (Training) and Expert Visits (Lectures) that will help raise INFLPR’s research profile as well the one of the partnering institutes, organize two public Summers School type activities, internal and external expert driven Technology Workshops and Business-to-Business (B2B) meetings in conjunction with industry and academia clusters, and finally bringing the world-renowned Laser Ignition Conference (LIC) in 2017 to the INFLPR in Romania to increase INFLPR’s, the Romanian and the European visibility in the fields of Laser Ignition. The technological topic addresses the major challenge of mankind to lower the carbon footprint by efficient energy usage, thus LASIG-Twin will also have a significant societal impact. Dissemination will take care of this aspect by bringing the networking ideas to a broad public, from experts, the science community and industry stakeholder organization, to the interested, non-professional crowd, making society more aware of the importance of fuel efficiency and of the effects of EU funded Research and Development, in particular in a low developed country like Romania.