Country coordinators’ report for EWM Romania (2022 – 2024)

The country coordinators for Romania are (in alphabetical order): Maria-Magdalena Boureanu, University of Craiova, Romania, and Georgia Irina Oros, University of Oradea, Romania. Our group is called Romanian Women in Mathematics Network (RWM Network) and at the present this network has reached 55 Romanian members from various universities from Romania and also from abroad. Other persons strongly involved in our activities and decisions are Loredana Bălilescu, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, Romania and Elena Resmerita, Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Moreover, several other women mathematicians are systematically sustaining the activity of the RWM Network.

What glued us together was probably the fact that we frequently have online meetings where we discuss, we get to know each other and each other’s problems, we find out novelties, we exchange opinions, we support one another, we make presentations on subjects of common interest etc. Indeed, during the academic year we have our monthly seminar called”Mathematics and Life”, which was initiated on February 2021. The name of the seminar was chosen after a vote of our members (during an online meeting, about one year after starting the seminar). This seminar is usually moderated by Maria-Magdalena Boureanu, and, on occasions, by Georgia Irina Oros, by Elena Resmerita, or by Loredana Balilescu. We put below the online meetings that took place from July 2022, since the other meetings appear in our previous report (please keep in mind that during the summer period we usually do not meet, in accordance to our academic activities):

● June 16, 2022: Round table. Discussion about future plans.

● October 10, 2022: A debate on whether or not the two years of maternity leave provided by the state for raising children in Romania should be deducted from certain promotion criteria. ● November 10, 2022: We discussed the initiatives that we took in the previous month to convince the people in charge that the two years of maternity leave provided by the state for raising children in Romania should be deducted from certain promotion criteria.

● December 13, 2022: Presentation given by Mrs. Elena Mesea (Team Leader – Software Development, at Continental Automotive Systems SRL; Ambassador of this company in relations with University of Craiova): “Women in Exact Sciences. Celebrating diversity”.
● January 12, 2023: Happy New Year meeting! Discussions regarding the upcoming 2 years celebration of the RWM network. Discussions about the teaching situation in each university.

● February 9, 2023: 2 years celebration of the RWM network: Presentation of our past activities and of the Romanian Women in Mathematics poster.
● March 13, 2023: Discussions about upcoming conferences and the necessity of attending such events (encouraging young women mathematicians to attend more conferences).

● May 22, 2023: An event associated to May 12 initiative – Celebrating Women in Mathematics – “Meeting Ana Caraiani – an outstanding mathematician” (an online interview of Ana Caraiani performed by Elena Resmerita).
● October 17, 2023: Welcome back! New start, new goals. (Open discussion on summer activities and on how to get financial funds for research activities from each university).

● November 15, 2023: Presentation and discussion on the new education law in Romania.
● December 14, 2023: Open talks on the next year activities; thoughts at the end of the year. ● January 25, 2024: Talk by Maria-Magdalena Boureanu (group member, Univ. of Craiova): “About European Women in Mathematics (EWM) and the activities of the networks from other countries”.
● February 15, 2024: 3 years celebration of the RWM network! Presentation given by Mrs. Roxana Ghiba (Life Coach): “Differences between women and men. How we manage the stress generated by these differences”. This was followed by an interesting dialogue.
●March 14, 2024: Presentation given by Diana Biclea (group member, Univ. Lucian Blaga, Sibiu): “Digital tools in superior mathematics”
●April 15, 2024: New initiative: determining the percentage of female mathematicians in higher education in Romania.
●June 11, 2024: Presentation given by Anca Veronica Ion (group member, Institute of Mathematical Statistic and Applied Mathematics of the Romanian Academy): “Women in Mathematics Day in Romania — Celebrating Adelina Georgescu (Teacher. Researcher. Mother)”. This was followed by an emotional discussion, with the participants sharing their memories about Prof. Adelina Georgescu.

A significant step in strengthening the relations inside our group was when we decided to meet onsite. Since we lack financial resources, we thought that it is a good idea to associate our meetings to conferences. This way, we succeeded to organize:

o First meeting in person: Romanian Women in Mathematics Dinner on July 01, 2023. Main organizer: Loredana Balilescu (Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania).

This was associated to the Tenth Congress of Romanian Mathematicians June 30 –

July 5, 2023, Pitești, Romania.
o Second meeting in person: Romanian Women in Mathematics Dinner on September

16, 2023. Main organizer: Ana-Maria Moșneagu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași). This was associated to the 30th Conference on Applied and Industrial Mathematics CAIM 2023, Iasi, September 14-17, 2023.

Our next onsite meeting will be:

o Third meeting in person: Romanian Women in Mathematics Dinner on September 2024 (to be organized by Georgia Irina Oros, University of Oradea). This meeting will be associated to the 31th Conference on Applied and Industrial Mathematics CAIM 2024, Oradea, September 19-22, 2024.

Note that, apart from these online and onsite meetings, we always keep in touch via the following Google Group: [email protected] It is here where we take initiative: we announce the activities of the group, we propose topics of interest for our online seminars, we keep each other updated with the novelties in our field, and sometimes we debate. This Google Group has been started in December 2020 and it includes the 55 members previously mentioned.

A valuable tool in making our group visible is represented by the group’s websitehttps://sites.google.com/view/romanianwomeninmath/home?authuser=0 which was launched by Georgia Irina Oros on February 2022. Georgia is the one that takes care of this website, adding the novelties, posting the pdf files corresponding to the online presentations, and announcing our meetings. This way it is easier for the people outside our group to join us. In addition, on this website we present the logo of our network and a poster containing Romanian Women in Mathematics, both created by Dana Ficuț-Vicas (group member, Romanian Academy Cluj Branch · Astronomical Observatory). The logo of our network was selected as the one most voted by all the members of our group after Dana presented us several variants.

July 10, 2024
Country coordinators (in alphabetical order): Maria-Magdalena Boureanu, University of Craiova, Romania Georgia Irina Oros, University of Oradea, Romania