Several Romanians inspired the audience with their stories at the recent TEDx Bucharest event last week. They're brilliant people who either stayed in Romania to achieve performances in their home country or chose to go abroad to test their limits and achieve their potential.

By Corina Saceanu

Radu Tatucu is a social entrepreneur who believes in Romania's youth and in its power to change the country. He encourages young people to stop seeing Romania as a bad place and to stop expecting the state to take care of them, become doers rather than spectators.

“I see a young generation raising, they're proactive, they have strong work ethics, they're involved in the local communities,” said Radu Tatucu at last week's TEDx Bucharest event.

“Let's stop fooling ourselves and waiting for others to come and save us! Let's invest in education and I guarantee than five or ten years down the road, Romania will be a different place,” said Tatucu.

Radu finished his last two years of high school in the UK and went to enroll into Harvard College on a full scholarship. At 22, he was one of the youngest junior professional associates in the World Bank's Junior Professional Associate program in Washington D.C.  He is currently pursuing a master degree in public policy at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School and an MBA at the London Business School.

Adrian Stoica is a NASA researcher, having led NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as Manager of the Advanced Robotic Controls group for the last 15 years. 20 years ago, Stoica left Romania. “To get money and career, I was trading my emotional self,” said Stanciu. And what a career he got!

Adrian's PhD thesis proposed that humanoid robots learn by imitation of human movements, which was a pioneering idea, now a central research theme in robotics.

Adrain Stoica holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and an MS in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Iasi in Romania.

He contributed pioneering work in new fields, like humanoid learning by imitation, evolvable hardware, survivable self-reconfigurable electronics for extreme environments, invented new concepts (polymorphic electronics, cognitive anti-tamper techniques) and took them to hardware demonstration.

Read more about Adrian Stoica  here.

Adrian Bejan is a Romanian-born professor of mechanical engineering at the Duke University in the US, having received his degrees from the MIT universities in the 70s. His research covers a wide range of topics in thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, convection and porous media. More recently, he developed the constructal law of design in nature.

Bejan is ranked among the 100 most highly cited authors worldwide in engineering (all fields, all countries). He has received 16 honorary doctorates from universities in 11 countries.

Check out the website about the constructal law of design in nature here.  You might also want to learn about the Bejan numbers (taking after his name) here.

Andrei Rosu is a young professional who one day decided to pursue his dreams. They have carried him to run the North Pole Marathon and on the path to running marathons on all continents.

“I didn't have any money to go to these marathons, I was far from being a brave man, I was not an adrenaline lover and I had no idea I could run more than 1 kilometer. Plus, I was a frequent cold catcher,” said Rosu. He was sqeezed out of energy every evening coming back from work and as he sat on the couch watching TV with his two-year old son, he realized he should be a better example for his son. When he received a joke e-mail from a colleague asking whether he wanted to run the North Pole Marathon, he dreamed it, started planning it, and eventually did it.

“Dream it big, plan it right and do it now!”, says Rosu.

Read more about Andrei in our recent article here.

Mihai Panaitescu is a 24-year old Romanian designer who now works as a design manager for Lotus cars. Passioned about car design, he left Romania in 2006 with a scolarship in Torino, with the European Institute of Design. He went on design a car prototype which got him the first place in the Peugeot Design Competition.

He has also worked with companies like Pinifarina and Toyota in advanced design in Tokyo.

Cancer diagnosis takes too long. So long that, by the time the diseases is found, it is too late. Around 60 percent of the cancer diagnosis come into the state of the process when nothing more can be done for the patient. Researcher Raluca van Staden invented a device which can detect cancer is less than six minutes. She got the Golden Trophy of the World Intellectual Property Organization for the Best Woman Inventor at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva this year.

Read more about Raluca Van Staden in our recent article here.

Roland Hermann is young professional dentist born in Medias, Sibiu county, who graduated from the Faculty of Dental Medicine in Targu Mures. Roland started heading to expeditions in remote countries to help people who would not otherwise afford or have access to the services of a specialist doctor.

He gathers information, chooses a specific destination, builds up a team, raises money and then gets in touch with people at his destination and travels to countries such as Brazil, Nepal, Rwanda or Chad to help those in need of his expertise.

To save money, which might be otherwise used to buy medicines, but also to be able to quickly travel the distances between remote villages, Roland obtained a pilot’s license.

Oana Pellea is an already famous Romanian actress who got international awards for her leading role in Gulea’s “State of Fact”, including the Best Actress awards at the Geneva Film Festival, the San Marino Political Film Festival and the Golden Eagle International Film Festival in Batumi, Georgia. She's also known internationally for the part she played in Alfonso Cuaron’s movie “Children of men”, which got three Oscar nominations in 2008.

In June 2009 she published her first book, a journal written without the intention of it ever being published. “Journal 2003-2009″. Oana Pellea is also a trainer of theatrical techniques.

Catalin Stefanescu is the TV producer and host of the show Garantat 100%, a ten-year old cultural program broadcasted on state television TVR 1. He has received several awards for reports and documentaries. In 2002, he got the Award for Best Documentary Romanian – Penitentiary, the Grand Prix in TELEVEST Festival and the CNA( Audiovisual National Center) Award for best local TV program for Garantat 100%. Between 2003-2006, he also received the APTR (The Association of Television Professionals in Romania ) Award for Best Cultural Program.

corina@romania-insider.com