The University of Bucharest announces the launch of the UB-CIVIS Open Lab and the financing of social responsibility projects

The University of Bucharest announces the launch of an Open Lab aimed at settling and accelerating the collaboration between the academic community of UB and the interested parties of the Romanian society for the development of local, regional or national communities. The initiative, part of the CIVIS project, which states the opening of such entities within all member universities, comes to confirm once more the role taken by the academic community of the University of Bucharest of closely collaborating with the social actors for finding innovative solutions to the problems faced by our society.

Imagined as a space for collaboration and aggregation of research and education with civic involvement, the UB-CIVIS Open Lab was inaugurated during an online event held on Monday, September 28, 2020, with the participation of Professor Marian Preda, Rector of the University of Bucharest, and Vice-Rectors Sorin Costreie and Magdalena Iordache-Platis, as well as of Jose Luis Bau, from the Autonomous University of Madrid, the coordinator of the efforts to create Open Labs within CIVIS.

The meeting, hosted by Professor Magdalena Iordache-Platis, Vice-Rector for Quality management, Social Responsibility and the Relationship with Social Partners, and coordinator of the UB-CIVIS Open Lab, brought together representatives of the academic community of UB and of other universities from Romania and from abroad with representatives of the business environment, of several non-governmental, professional and business organizations, of several research institutes, as well as secondary education teachers.

Accordingly, the representatives of the University of Bucharest announced the launch, in the upcoming period, of a competition for projects in five essential areas: Digital and technological transformation; Cities, Territories, Mobility; Health; Society, Culture, Heritage; Climate, Environment, Energy.

Following the competition, which can be attended by representatives of private, public and non-governmental institutions, in partnership with the University of Bucharest, the most viable projects will be selected, which, through the involvement of educational, knowledge and research resources, will contribute to the identification of creative and innovative responses and solutions for the needs and challenges that our society is facing. The University of Bucharest allocates, through the CIVIS project, the amount of 10,000 Euros for the financing of these social responsibility projects.

The University of Bucharest is an institution with responsibility towards the Romanian society, permanently acting in order to defend its principles and its cultural, social and moral values. It preserves and values the achievements of past and present generations and, most importantly, it prepares the elites of the future. The University of Bucharest is currently part of the CIVIS European alliance, alongside other seven universities.

CIVIS, The European Civic University, is a European academic alliance and reunites eight of the most important and reputed universities across Europe: Aix-Marseille Université, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Bucharest, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Sapienza Università di Roma, Stockholm University and Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. CIVIS brings together a community of more than 384,000 students and 55,000 staff member, from which 30,000 are academics and researchers.