The JASSY participants attended the courses of one of the five interdisciplinary modules: Hard Sciences unveiled -an Interdisciplinary Tour; Strategic Human Resource Management; Finance and Risk Management; Eastern Europe: Cultural Frames, Identities and Social-Political Perspectives; Tourism at the Eastern Border of the EU and had the possibility to earn 6 ECTS credits upon successfully passing the final evaluation.

The JASSY Opening Ceremony took place on July 8^th in the Mihai Eminescu Aula Magna, in the presence of Prof. dr. Henri Luchian, Vice-Rector for International Relations and the module coordinators:  Lecturer dr. Ionuț Topală, Assoc.Prof.dr. Ruxandra Ciulu, Assoc.Prof.dr. Silviu Ursu, Prof. dr. Daniela Șoitu and Lecturer dr. Mihai Bulai. The JASSY Plenary Session entitled Science Education Research – An Applied Science was delivered by Professor Andreas Müller from the Faculty of Science, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

62 professors from UAIC delivered the courses offered within the five modules.

The participants in the Hard Sciences Unveiled – an Interdisciplinary Tour  module have studied, among many other topics, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematical Models in Life Sciences, Applications of Probability Theory, Introduction to Criptography.

The students who have enrolled in the Strategic Human Resource Management module have acquired know-how on generating and successfully integrating key organizational skills, developing strategic analyses and bringing added value to companies for which they may work for as HR specialists.

The Finance and Risk Management module offered its participants a course-package designed to provide valuable insight on proficiently managing various types of risks such as market, credit, operational, liquidity, counterparty or insurance risk in accordance with the requirements of the world-leading certifications for risk management.

The Eastern Europe: Cultural Frames, Identities and Social-Political Perspectives module has provided the grounds for participants to accurately grasp and interpret the features of the Eastern European culture, as well as to discover the depths of Romanian, which is the easternmost Romance language.

The students who attended the courses of the module Tourism at the Eastern Border of the EU. Interdisciplinary Training for Tour Guides discovered essential secrets of what makes a well-rounded tour guide, perceived through an interdisciplinary lens.

Aside from douzens of courses offered during the two weeks of JASSY, the sudents have also enjoyed extracurricular activities such as kayaking, workshops on sky map reading, bird-watching techniques, wine tasting, a guided tour of the city, as well as visits to landmarks in Iași and monasteries in Bukovina.

Testimonials

I was so happy to be a participant of this programme, it was really interesting and useful. I got new skills and information which I really can use in my job as a journalist. I enjoyed the balance between lectures and extracurricular activities. We had a lot to do, but still made friends and had a great experience.Dana Buralkiyeva, Kazakhstan, JASSY participant in the TTG module

The JASSY Summer School 2019 has been an exciting and enjoyable experience for me. Prior to coming to Iași, I had no knowledge of the Romanian culture and history, even less so of the Eastern European culture. At first, I had doubts if I would be able to enjoy the two-week program due to my ignorance of the culture, but after these two weeks, I am thankful and blessed to have had the opportunity to participate in this program. I will always bring with me all the memories that I have made of this wonderful place. Thank you so much once again. Iași will always have a special place in my heart. Abelmar Lylle Guillermo Baniqued, Philippines, JASSY participant in the SHRM module

The EC2U proposal is the result of one year and a half of intense joint work culminating in the formal establishment of the EC2U alliance through the MoU signed by the Rectors of the University of Coimbra, of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, of the University of Pavia, of the University of Poitiers (Coordinator), of the University of Salamanca and of the University of Turku: the EC2U Alliance is a community of 160 000 students and staff, in direct reach to more than 1 500 000 citizens.

EC2U is a multi-cultural and multi-lingual Alliance consisting of six long-standing, education- and research-led, locally and globally engaged universities from four diverse regions of the European Union. The Alliance’s ambition is to develop an innovative space allowing mobility to flow freely between the six universities and associated cities. This model of openness will contribute to overcome clichéd views of regional and national identities and achieve a united and stronger Europe.

The Alliance will reach this ambition by creating a pan-European campus, connected by the common European identity, contributing to the creation of a smart higher education eco-system through a new model of quality education for an inclusive civic society. This unique model relies on the double vertical and horizontal integration strategy, producing synergies from education, research and innovation, from formal/non-formal/informal education, and from the involvement of academic communities, municipalities, higher education regulatory bodies, socio-economic entities, citizens.

In 2022, the project will have delivered strategies, guidelines and resources to provide its members with a model of joint governance, a joint campus life, including guidelines and preparatory steps taken for multi-lateral joint European degrees, significantly increased levels of mobility (physical and virtual) of students and staff, large-scale sharing of resources in education, research and campus services, as well as culture and sports events. Joint teams of teaching staff, researchers and students will be created on selected UNSDG-based missions: Good health and well-being, Quality education, Sustainable cities and communities.

In 2025, the EC2U European campus will have reached its full implementation as a unique partnership between academia, cities and regional socio-economic stakeholders, at the service of successive generations of European citizens.

Contact: contact@ec2u.eu

The aim of the project is to identify the effects of political discourse on antigypsyism, and prosocial and antisocial action intentions toward Roma people and Travellers, and to evaluate and improve anti-discrimination interventions. The findings of the project will be used to create a toolkit for designing interventions, and disseminate country level and integrated reports to inform local and EU level policy makers, practitioners, NGOs, academic researchers as well as the general public.

The project budget is 430 thousand euros, 80% of which is financed by the EU. The consortium is led by EötvösLoránd University, Budapest in partnership with University of Limerick, Université Paris-Nanterre, Slovak Academy of Science, and Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi.

Alexandru Ioan Cuza University’s team reunites four colleagues from the Department of Psychology, Associate professor Mihaela Boza (project supervisor), Associate professor Mihai Curelaru, lecturer Ana Maria Tepordei and Assistant Emilia Alexandra Pascal.

After one year of fruitful joint preparatory work based on their sustained academic cooperation, the universities of Coimbra (Portugal), Alexandru Ioan Cuza of Iasi (Romania), Pavia (Italy), Poitiers (France), Salamanca (Spain) and Turku (Finland) are proud to announce the establishment of a consortium that will submit an application to the pilot phase of Alliances of European Universities, entitled European Campus of City-Universities (EC2U).

Consisting of six long-standing, education- and research-led, locally and globally engaged universities from Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western regions of Europe, this multi-cultural and multi-lingual consortium has the ambition to contribute in an effective way to achieving a more united and stronger Europe by promoting European values, and to making these values an integral part of the daily life of all Citizens. With the creation of its European Campus, this consortium will develop sustainable joint activities to strengthen the link between higher education, research and innovation, and outreach towards society at large.

Contact: contact@ec2u.eu

The idea of an intelligent book started from an Orhan Pamuk novel, a Nobel Laureate writer. On his way to attending a conference in Istanbul, Professor Cristea also took in his luggage the novel „The Museum of Innocence”, the fiction story about a museum that displays objects bearing witness to a love story from the 80’s Istanbul.

One of his Turkish peers told him that Pamuk actually inaugurated a real museum in Istanbul, with the artifacts mentioned in the novel. At the entrance, the lady selling tickets asked Professor Cristea for the book, instead of money. She opened it at page 613, at the very part mentioning the Museum of Innocence and where a ticket was drawn. There, on the picture, she applied the museum access stamp.

Professor Dan Cristea

This crossroads between reality and fiction gave Professor Cristea the first idea about designing a „smart book”. An intelligent book would have alerted him to the possibility of visiting the Istanbul Museum of Innocence, even take the tour of the 80’s metropolis, as described by Orhan Pamuk in his book. The intelligent book coud have signaled potential meetings with the author or could have put him in contact with other Pamuk fan readers from the surroundings. The concept could be developed furthermore: the intelligent book would be able to understand the relations between the characters and the plot, to create by itself genealogical trees, abstracts, timelines and character relations maps.

The first smart book, the result of a 4-year research and code writing, is the 8th grade Geography textbook and will be available to students by the end of the school year. The textbook will function as a mobile app for devices connected to the Internet and GPS services. On the mobile device, the book could be read as a regular textbook, but will also have other functions. Each mention of a geographical location is automatically recognised and the student is informed about the possibility to find out suplimentary information. Moreover, each time a student passes by one of the hundreds locations mentioned in the textbook, he is made aware that the objective figures in the Geography textbook and is reminded relevant information about it.

How the smart book works. The app has to be downloaded on the user’s tablet or mobile phone. Afterwards, it will automatically generate intelligent maps of the book content, based on the understanding of the text by the machine. Depending on the reader’s location and calendar, the application recommends visiting the sights mentioned in the book, signals the places the characters have been to, informs about events connected to the reading and allows communication with others readers.

“The functionalities of the first intelligent text of this kind are few, compared to the rest we have in mind”, Dan Cristea said. “We plan to create much more sophisticated applications. For instance, tourist guides constantly updated with events taking place in town and to suggest activities according to the location. It can be applied to non-fiction books that notify you when you pass by geographic locations, buildings or institutions mentioned in the book. But the most difficult challenge remains the understanding of fiction texts, the relations between the characters, the storyline. How can you determine artificial intelligence to understand the sudden translation to the perspective of another character or a diary entry of recounting a memory? A human being is able to decipher them, as easy as it breaths. Well, for a machine is much more difficult.”

How to train artificial intelligence to understand people

 The answer to the question “How do you make a computer program to understand a text?” derives mainly from the hope that it will learn by himself. “Automatic learning”, an entire chapter of Computer Science, plays an important part in understanding language.  Basically, the program is given the texts in which things to be understood are tagged or marked in a certain manner. Using tags, the program needs to „figure it out”, to derive rules, then to apply them on new texts. It works probabilistically, meaning that sometimes, the understanding is not adequate, but when it gets feedback and the problem is fixed, the program increases its performance.

One of the first fiction texts used as trial was Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historic novel “Quo Vadis”, whose adnotation took two years. “I worked with my students, fragmenting the text into several parts. They indicated to the program where the emotional and family-related relations occur, then the separate parts had to be connected and corrected – both automatically and manually. Now, we hope to be able to use our results in order to provide the program with learning material.” Thus, after gathering several such examples, the intelligent book would be capable to understand independently if the characters have a cordial relationship or, on the contrary, a turbulent one, if they are kindred and what are those relations.

The relations in ”Quo Vadis” have been tagged mannually by the students and professors, in order to train the program recognise them subsenquently. In the image can be noticed: the map of the emotional relations between characters, the map of the main characters’ relationships, Vicinius; the statistics of the relations of Vicinius, the main character.

A similar approach exists when it comes to recognising the temporal development of a story, although the issue is even more complicated than that. For the recognition of temporal plans, Professor Dan Cristea works with master students and Ph.D. student Andreea Macovei on a different novel, ”Map of the invisible world”, by Tash Aw. The same as in the ”Quo Vadis” case, the objective consists in indicating the programme the transitory moment from a temporary dimension to another, to be capable of understanding by itself.

“We have found inspiration from the rail tracks”, Professor Cristea explained. ”In a train station, there are several rail tracks that combine, get separated, combine with others… it’s a tangle. Just like people’s destinies. If a rail track would be a person’s fate, presented in a book, he meets with another character, spend some time together, then they separate and meet other people. We’ve named them time tracks and our aim is to detect them separately.”

Books that suggest to the publisher how they should look like

In the future, the research team from the University hopes that the intelligent book applications will also be attractive to the publishing industry. In a new research project proposition, Professor Dan Cristea, together with researchers from Brunno Kessler Foundation from Trento and Vrije Universitaet Amsterdam, computer scientists from ArtSoft Consult Cluj-Napoca and a group of publishers from Italy and Hungary advances the idea of tool development for book publishers. Starting from text understanding, programmes would be capable to suggest the publisher digital artifacts meant to generate interraction: event references or real places, timelines, character interrelation maps, family trees and so on. These specific applications are suitable especially to textbooks and tour guides, but will also be used for fiction books.

The declared purpose of the book re-configuration project is to bring reading in children’s world. ”Children are so obssesed with electronic gadgets, they have no idea how many satisfactions they can find holding a book in their hands, reading it. We thought that by exploiting young people’s passion for these devices, adapting books to them, making the text interractive, we could revive the interest of the young generations  for reading, a universe that fades away slowly”, Dan Cristea explained. The intelligent book would also provide, in its final version, the possibility to create connections between its readers, to generate social groups for readers to meet and discuss about the content – a Facebook where the only acceptable posts are comments on books.

„MappingBooks – Let’s jump in the book!” project is financed by the Ministry of National Education. The Alexandru Ioan Cuza University team of project is composed of Professor Dan Cristea, Ph.D., Lecturer Ionuț Pistol Ph.D., scientific researcher Daniela Gifu and scientific researcher Lucian Gâdioi from the Faculty of Computer Science, Lecturer Mihai Niculiță Ph.D. from the Faculty of Geography and Geology and Dorina Ticu.

Final phase of the local competition was hosted by CFA Romania and took place on March 4, 2017 in Bucharest. The event brought together teams of students representing the major schools of economics in both countries: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu and Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova.

The team that represented our university included students of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEAA): Daniela Baluțel, Gheorghe Cojocaru, Daniela Dabija – students of the Master in Finance and Risk Management (FRM), and Paul Carcea, Alexandru Șerban – students of the undergraduate programme “Business Administration” (BA). They assumed the role of financial analysts and conducted for five months an intense financial research activity of ELECTRICA SA, under the supervision of a practitioner and an academic: Andreea Nica, CFA, PRM, as industry mentor from CFA Society România, and Silviu Ursu, associate professor and coordinator of the Master in Finance and Risk Management, as faculty adviser from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. The equity research report was successfully presented to a panel of judges consisting of Chartered Financial Analysts (CFA), members of the Romanian association of internationally recognized financial analysts.

Repeating the successes in the first two editions of CFA Institute Research Challenge held in Romania, when teams of FRM students representing UAIC won the national competition and represented Romania in the regional finals in London and Milan, is a strong indicator of the skills and knowledge obtained in this double-degree program. FRM – the Master For Ready Minds of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, with a curriculum aligned with the CFA Body of Knowledge and organized in partnership with four top European universities, provides its graduates with the guarantee of their future performance in financial and investment analysis, and also in economic research.

The team of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi will represent Romania in the EMEA final of the CFA Institute Research Challenge, which will be held in April 2017, in Milan (Italy).

For more details see CFA Institute Research Challenge, CFA Society Romania și Finance and Risk Management.

More details about the project could be consulted on the official website  

Theme        

Philosophy can be the result of speculative or theoretical thinking, but it also can have roots in cultural traditions. A certain cultural tradition is a very complex milieu constituted by the symbolic codes motivating collective and individual conduct, by means of expressing reality, by the ways of preserving past heritage and by specific spiritual practices. Being the ‘interface’ through witch concrete humans can live their lives, a cultural tradition is also dynamic, reflecting and including continuous changes induced by the new happenings, trends and life experiences, both individual and collective. This dynamic balances the need to preserve a heritage while integrating the novelty leads to reflection, to meditation, and to philosophy. This kind of philosophizing originates in concrete reasons and seeks to provide practical solutions of life. More than that, a major aim of such philosophy is to deliver a comprehensive vision of reality able to address the needs brought by a certain historical time. At times, this kind of philosophy has not been recognized due to ab inadequate hermeneutics which offered too narrow a description of what can be designated as ‘philosophy’.

In the Global Age of today, philosophy emerging from cultural and spiritual traditions can play an important role, because it provides much more complex, nuanced and refined solutions for current quests and dilemmas. The reason is that such kind of reflection brings forward values preserved by tradition and the learnings and findings of many generations, but can express their essence in response to the challenges of the moment. Our Global Age calls for global answers, but such answers can be provided only from particular cultural areas, and from philosophies which arise thence. We cannot have unique and univocal answers even if we have now global questions, so it is more than ever necessary to bring together thinkers from every major cultural area in the attempt to build a multi-perspective response to the crises and challenges of today.

Philosophers of the world are welcome to join us on the topic “Philosophy Emerging from Cultural Traditions and its Role in a Global Age.”

Subthemes

1. Status and role of philosophy emerging from cultural traditions

2. Spiritual practice as source of philosophy

3. Religious role in today’s society

4. Cultural traditions as resources of new scientific insights and explanations

5. Hermeneutic perspectives on tradition as a cultural fact

More information HERE.

Career Virtual Fair offers to the students and the alumni in search of a job or an internship programme the possibility to apply and participate at online interviews in English with representatives of important businesess and multinational companies after registering and uploading their CV’s at http://www.careervirtualfair.com/candidate-registration/.

This career event aims to foster and enhance internationalization and placement mobility and represents the initiative of the University of Padova, which is a member of Coimbra Group.