Empowering people through science. On a large scale
As we enter UPB’s 200th year of existence, our community is truly brimming with ideas and energy. Initiatives across the university seem to converge towards an even greater sense of community and a large common purpose: servicing our nation and the world through solutions to the global challenges. This is exactly why, thanks to the extraordinary sustained and distributed effort of faculty, staff, students and alumni, we have developed CAMPUS —the Center for Advanced Research on New Materials, Products and Innovative Processes — a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary problem-solving facility dedicated to the looming problems of society and the private sector.
From clean energy to better traffic, from smarter cities and enterprises to the future of the Internet, CAMPUS aims at deploying the convergence of the life, physical, and engineering sciences as a catalyst for new solutions. At a time when the world urgently needs more people who understand science and engineering, we extend the power of hands-on problem-solving to companies and institutions around the globe in the effort to explore a new model of university activity — enhancing communities through science. This is CAMPUS’s business proposal.
We know that the world offers us limitless opportunities for important challenges. But for UPB to commit itself to its distinctive mission, we must do more than simply bring perfectly theoretical scientific models to life. We must solve actual problems, faced by real people, which have immediate, direct and practical effects either in making life better or in increasing revenue for private partners. This is the expression of the ethos and driving impulse behind our work at UPB. And I am certain that the brilliant confident spirit of the CAMPUS team will animate this pursuit for a long time to come — raising our ambitions, sparking new collaborations, and inspiring a new generation of young people to help us invent the future.
Community springs from shared experience. It grows out of values held deeply and in common. It cannot be manufactured on demand, but it can be fostered. That is our challenge now — to show the world that universities, the private sector and society alike can push together towards a world where true solutions are explored and discovered faster, better, together. And CAMPUS tells this story more clearly and more confidently than it may have been told in decades in Romania.
The Center for Advanced Research on New Materials, Products and Innovative Processes sprang from the minds and hands of hundreds of people. On behalf of UPB, I offer them and everyone who played a part in this project a most enthusiastic thank you.
Rector, Mihnea Costoiu