A Romanian researcher and his project Guardian Angels is one of the finalists in a science project competition organized by the European Commission. Professor Adrian Ionescu (in picture) and his team invented a device which can protect the user from dangers, either coming from others, or from himself. Ionescu, head of the Nanoelectronic Devices Lab at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, competed against other 25 scientific plans and was one of the four to be shortlisted for the prize. And winning could bring plenty of funding for the selected project: EUR 1 billion over the next 10 years, which could mean moving the pilot project to mass production.

His device alerts the user when his life, health or corporal integrity are endangered. The device can reduce healthcare spending. It collects information about the user's environment and about his or her health status, and when the result is negative, the device asks the user to exercise, for example.

The other three projects in the competition are a data-crunching machine to simulate social, economic and technological change on our planet, a project which aims to create the most accurate computer model of the human brain to date, and finding better ways to produce and employ graphene — an ultra-thin material, only one atom thick, that is set revolutionize manufacturing and have a very wide range of applications.

There will be two winners, and the European Commission will announce them on January 28. Each project will initially receive EUR 54 million from the European Union's research budget, and a similar budget from the national governments and other sources. If they reach certain milestones within 30 months, they can receive additional money, adding up to EUR 1 billion over a decade.

More about the project coordinated by Adrian Ionescu here. Ionescu received B.S./M.S. and PhD degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania and the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France, in 1989 and 1997, respectively. He has held staff and/or visiting positions at LETI-CEA, Grenoble, France, LPCS-ENSERG, Grenoble, France and Stanford University, USA, in 1998 and 1999.  He is director of the Laboratory of Micro/Nanoelectronic Devices (NANOLAB). He is appointed as the national representative of Switzerland for the European Nanoelectronics Initiative Advisory Council (ENIAC) and member of the Scientific Committee of CATRENE. Dr. Ionescu is the European Chapter Chair of the ITRS Emerging Research Devices Working Group.

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