Ordinary Members

Nicoleta Caragea

Nicoleta Caragea is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, Ecological University of Bucharest and senior expert at the National Institute of Statistics.
The Ph.D. in Economics was obtained under aegis of the Romanian Academy, Institute of National Economy.
Teaching activity is focused mainly in the field of statistics, through courses and seminars and master degree programs (statistics, economic statistics, social statistics, economic and financial analysis).
She participated as a national expert in various projects, workshops and conferences organized by prestigious international institutions with statistics activity (EUROSTAT, OECD, WHO, World Bank, UNICEF-UIS).
The results of her research activity have been published in many prestigious journals in the Romania and abroad (Romanian Journal of Economics, Romanian Statistical, Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics Studies and Research) and registered in international databases (ISI Thomson Reuters , RePEc, DOAJ, Index Copernicus and so on).

Ana-Maria Ciuhu

Ana-Maria Ciuhu is founding member of R-omanian Team. She is working as statistician in the General Department of Demography and Social Statistics, National Institute of Statistics. In addition to her primary role, she also holds a part-time position as senior researcher at the Institute of National Economy, Romanian Academy.

She was involved in the development of studies on international migration, which successfully implemented the application of R programming language within the framework of Romanian official statistics. She continues to use R extensively in her ongoing research activities, as well as in various methodological procedures pertinent to social statistics, including sampling, calibration, and imputation. She holds a post-doctoral diploma and a PhD in Economics obtained under aegis of the Romanian Academy, National Institute of Economic Research.

Ciprian Alexandru

Ciprian Alexandru is Researcher in Data Sciences, founding member of R-omanian Team. He worked more than 7 years as Data Scientist for the General Department of Social Statistics and Demography from National Institute of Statistics-Romania, on various fields of activities, such as: R programming, Python, Data cleaning and Data Matching, Webscraping, Data analytics and visualization, Data mining and big-data, Data integration, data processing and data validation, use and integrate administrative data in compiling statistics. He was data analyst of On Line Job Vacancies collected data from the web and from administrative sources, during 2016-2020, in ESSnet BigData projects (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cros/content/essnet-big-data-1_en), for producing statistical estimates for online job vacancies based on suitable techniques and concrete methodologies developed during the pilot.

From February 2021 he is Short Time Consultant for World Bank as Data analyst and Survey Solution Implementation Expert in the specific areas: Data analyst for collected database of Census in Romania; Validation of collected data of Census; Convert collected data in Census micro-data; Detailed daily reports regarding monitoring the CAWI and CAPI ongoing collected data; Create Shiny Dashboard for data validation with reporting in R markdown, for Agricultural Census in Romania. Also, in the same contract, he provide training and support for the development and testing of the IT integrated system for all stages of Population and Housing Census and General Agricultural Census, CAPI and CAWI collection methods.
Starting with June 2023, is Data Analyst for the European Commission, in DG AGRI.

He has double degree bachelor’s in Engineering and in Economics. Also, he is Associate Professor at the Ecological University of Bucharest and Vice-rector on Research activities. The Ph.D. in Economics was obtained under aegis of the Romanian Academy, National Institute of Economic Research. He participated in various research projects (including Eurostat), workshops, national and international conferences.

His research activity was commissioned in value by publishing studies in journals in Romania and in Europe, as well as in international databases (ISI Thomson, DOAJ, EBSCO, RePEc [https://ideas.repec.org/f/pal594.html]). His research papers and articles are also published in prestigious peer reviewed publications.

Adrian Dusa

Adrian Dusa is a Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Bucharest, where he teaches social statistics, research methodology and measurement in the social sciences.

He is also the National Coordinator of the ESS - European Social Survey, and Director of the RODA - Romanian Social Data Archive, being involved in data archiving for more than 20 years in partnership with the CESSDA - Council of European Social Science Data Archives.

His activity in the domain of research infrastructures was acknowledged both nationally, appointed as a member of the CRIC - Romanian Committee for Research Infrastructures, and internationally as a former Romanian delegate to ESFRI - European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures, where he chaired the SCI-SWG - Social and Cultural Innovation Strategy Working Group between 2012 and 2014.

He publishes extensively in high impact, social research methodology journals, mostly based on his series of CRAN published R packages such as QCA for running Qualitative Comparative Analysis, DDIwR to smoothen the process of data documentation using the DDI standard, and declared for (finally) declaring missing values and labels in R.

Nicolae-Marius Jula

Nicolae-Marius Jula is a Lecturer at Nicolae Titulescu University of Bucharest, Faculty of Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Economics under aegis of the Romanian Academy, Institute for Economic Forecasting, 2010. Academic courses include econometrics and econometric forecasting. He is a member of RSAI, ERSA, Econometric Society, founding member of the Quantitative Finance Association and founding member and vice-president of the Projects for Youth Association. His research includes participation in various projects, workshops, seminars and national and international conferences and he published several books (author or co-author) and articles in prestigious international journals (ISI Thomson Reuters, RePEc, DOAJ, Index Copernicus etc.)

Bogdan Oancea

Bogdan Oancea is Professor of computer science at the University of Bucharest. He also holds the position of Head of the Department for Innovative Tools in Statistics at the National Institute of Statistics of Romania. His teaching activities primarily focus on the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, programming techniques and algorithms, and databases. His research activities center on high-performance computing, the application of machine learning methods in various fields, statistical data analysis, and medical statistics. He has accumulated more than 9,000 citations in the Web of Science database, with an h-index of 22, and over 18,000 citations on Google Scholar, with an h-index of 34.

Bogdan Oancea has served as a project manager and software developer, actively participating in various European-funded projects related to Big Data, with a particular emphasis on Mobile Phone Data. He possesses extensive experience in software design and programming using languages such as R, Python, Java, C, C++, and SQL. He has also worked with several parallel programming frameworks, including MPI, OpenMP, and CUDA.

Furthermore, he has been an active participant in numerous workshops and conferences organized by prestigious international institutions with a focus on statistics and IT activities.

Bogdan Oancea is a member of the Eurostat Task Force on Trusted Smart Statistics, the Task Force on Mobile Phone Data, and the UN Task Team on Mobile Phone Data.

Elena Druica

Elena Druica is a Full Professor of Economics with the Faculty of Business and Administration, University of Bucharest. She received an Undergraduate Degree in Mathematics from the University of Bucharest in 1994, a Diploma in Armonic Analysis in 1995, and a Master Degree in Financial and Risk Management in 2004. She earned a Ph.D. in Statistics and Probabilities from the Romanian Academy of Sciences in 2004, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Academy of Economics Studies n 2006.
In over 20 years of academic activity, Dr. Druica taught courses in the area of Statistics, Econometrics, Game and Decision Theory, and Behavioral Economics. Her research has focused on Applied Econometrics, Behavioral Economics, Behavioral Decision and Game Theory. She is the author of three books, co-author of two other books, the editor of two volumes, and co-author of five book chapters. Her works have appeared in Romania, Finland, Switzerland and the United States, under the guidance of prestigious publishers. Dr. Druica's research record also includes 28 papers and articles published in international peer-reviewed journals, 22 papers published in conference proceedings, and many presentations to prestigious international events.
Dr. Druica is a member of The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and The Society for Computational Economics and Finance.

Marian Necula

Marian Necula is working as a Statistician at the National Institute for Statistics, in the Department of Innovative Tools in Statistics, where he is tasked with exploring the potential of new data sources and new technologies, techniques and methodologies relevant in the field of official statistics.

He is also a Ph.d. candidate in Statistics at The Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, affiliated within theCybernetics and Statistics Doctoral School with a research programme focused on inland waters quality estimation using remote sensing data and machine learning.

He co-developed his first R api package for downloading NSI data, which (we hope) will be available soon on CRAN.

Associate Members

Mihaela Paun

Mihaela Paun is a Professor of Applied Statistics at the Faculty of Business and Administration, University of Bucharest and a Senior Researcher in the Department of Bioinformatics at the National Institute of Research and Development of Biological Sciences. Previously she held a position as an Associate Professor of Statistics at Louisiana Tech University, United States. Teaching activity is focused mainly in the field of statistics, through courses and seminars and master degree programs (statistics, economic statistics, social statistics, economic and financial analysis). She has a PhD in Computational Analysis and Modeling from Louisiana Tech University and a Master in Statistics and Actuarial Science from University of Western Ontario, Canada and she is habilitated in Cybernetics and Statistics at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies. She has participated as a principal investigator, partner coordinator and key member in various national and international projects (Horizon2020, FP7, NSF, NIH), is the coordinator of the Data protocols and handling work package of the Horizon2020 Danubius-PP project and is a Steering Committer member of the ESFRI(European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures) project DANUBIUS-RI preparatory phase. The research interests are indices of economic inequality, high performance computing, biometrics, environmental data analysis, bibliometrics and biostatistics which resulted in over 30 Web of Science journal publications. She uses R both in her research, as well as in teaching her classes (Parametric Statistics, Nonparametric Statistics, Biostatistics, Design of Experiments, Analysis of Variance, Regression Analysis) since 2006.

Alexandru Amarioarei

Alexandru Amarioarei is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest and Scientific Researcher III in the Bioinformatics Department of the National Institute of R-D for Biological Sciences, Bucharest. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of Lille and his research areas include scan statistics, distribution of runs and patterns in random sequences, applied and computational statistics, Monte Carlo simulation techniques and bibliometrics.
His teaching activities are focused on probability, stochastic processes, statistics and biostatistics and his courses use R both as a teaching tool as well as for software applications. He has participated in various national and international projects as a key member and he is the coordinator of the metadata task in the Horizon2020 Danubius-PP project.

Adrian Otoiu

Adrian Otoiu is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Cybernetics and Statistics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies. He has received a PhD in Cybernetics and Statistics from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, following an MA in economics degree for Queen's University, Canada. His research interests include labour economics, composite indicators, applied demographics, creative IT industries, data mining, and higher education.
He is an R'nthusiast since 2011, using R for carrying out most of its PhD and early career research, which resulted in publications in prestigious journals published by Elsevier, Springer Nature and Taylor and Francis, some of them awarded by the Lawrence R Klein Foundation, Society of Romanian Statisticians, and The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI). He is currently involved in promoting the use of R through papers "Overcoming R angst. The tools that help statisticians learn and use R effectively", published in the Romanian Statistical Review, a book with instructions on starting the use of R for labour market analysis, reference materials for beginning R users disseminated within the Department of Statistics and Econometrics at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, and a member of the R Work Group for promoting its use within the University's academic community.
Future plans include integrating R in Statistics, Econometrics, Economic Forecasting and Data Mining curricula by means of relevant applications and familiarity of use, improve/optimize teaching of R based on the needs of different audiences, and design scripts and packages that cater to specific needs.

Roxana Adam

Roxana Adam is a specialist that has conducted research for the private and public sectors. Her professional background includes positions such as: Senior Research Analyst at one of world’s largest research agencies, Senior Statistician in Official Statistics and Lecturer in Higher Education sector.
At 26 years old, she earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the Romanian Academy of Sciences, after an Undergraduate Degree in Business Administration and a Master Degree in Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, both from the University of Bucharest. Besides the formal education, she participated at various conferences and trainings, or gained fellowships in the economics and statistics area, in Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Italy etc.
As President of the Strategic Decision Analysis Association, Roxana Adam conducted research on voluntary basis in several projects related to economic and social development for vulnerable groups.
The main courses taught in academia are in the field of: Statistics, Econometrics, Data Analysis in R, and Marketing Research. She is a user of SQL, Python, C#, while R is her main programming language for all statistical analysis, from data mining to econometric models.