Luminita Popescu is the State Secretary at Romanian Agency for Equal Opportunities between Women and Men, a specialized central public administration institution subordinated to the Ministry of Family, Youth, and Equality of Opportunities. The Agency is responsible for the elaboration, coordination and enforcement of governmental strategies and policies in the field of equal opportunities between women and men and in the prevention and combating of domestic violence and it aims to promote equal opportunities and treatment between women and men with a view to eliminating all types of sex-based discrimination and preventing and combating domestic violence, by implementing measures, policies and programmes tailored to the victims’ needs.

Ms. Popescu has represented Romania in the works of Generation Equality Forum organized by the United Nations (UN) Women where she had an intervention about Cooperation to Action: Reducing Gender Inequalities to Strengthen Social Cohesion in Latin America and Europe.

She has a Master degree on Human Rights and Bachelor studies in Law and in Humanitieshe is member of the National Body of Experts in Educational Management.

Prof. Dr. Eng. Remus Zagan is the President of Constanta Maritime University Senate. He is experienced professor with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry. He works in many national and international research projects as researcher or project manager. He is skilled in Cyber Security, Analytical Skills,  Computer Science and Computer-Aided Design (CAD). He has strong education professional with a higher focused in Industrial Engineering from Polytechnic Institute  „Gheorghe Asachi“ from Iasi. He was expert researcher in the project “E-Maritime Medicine for seafarers’ students and seamanship physicians, a part of the International Association of Maritime Universities’ Capacity Building Project. He was also expert in projects of internationalization, employment of students on labour market and entrepreneurship in South East region.

Prof. Dr. Gabriel Raicu is the Rector of Constanta Maritime University. He is also the President of the Cyber Security Cluster of Excellence (CYSCOE) and the Director of the Excellence Center in Maritime Cybersecurity. He teaches Navigation in special conditions, transport data base and cybersecurity applications. In the late 1990s, he was among the pioneers who introduced virtualization at Constanta Maritime University. He firmly believes that artificial intelligence-centered activities hold immense potential for future research and development and a realistic approach to cybersecurity is imperative due to the significant risks associated with the transition to Industry 4.0 and beyond.

Dagmar Höppel holds a degree in economics and a Ph.D. in Social Science. She was the head of the Office of the Conference for Gender Equality in Higher Education (LaKoG) for the State of Baden-Württemberg at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Since 1996 she is active in several regional and national committees for equality in higher education. She developed the concept for several (funding) programs that support women in higher education, which were implemented by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts in Baden-Württemberg. MuT-Mentoring and Training – her Mentoring-Program – was founding-member in the EU-funded Eument-Net-Project and also founding member of Eument-Net-Association. She is still active in diffent boards and associations.

Contact:
Dr. Dagmar Höppel

Member of the eument-net Executive Board
Head of the kite-mentoring program,  University of Freiburg, Germany
Associate Professor, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine (USAMV), Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Evelyn Ruşdea is a distinguished scientist, project manager and mentoring coordinator with extensive expertise in both academic research and career development. Originally from Romania, Evelyn earned her degree in biology from Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca before pursuing her PhD at the University of Münster, Germany. Following her doctoral studies, she joined the Institute for Landscape Management at the University of Freiburg, Germany, where she has made significant contributions in the fields of land use, landscape development, and monitoring of biotopes and species.

Her dedication to advancing women in natural and life sciences is evident through her leadership of the kite-mentoring program at the University of Freiburg since 2013. Under her guidance, this program has grown into a thriving network of more than 300 participants, empowering women to achieve their personal and career goals. Evelyn has been an active mentor for women in various initiatives for over 15 years and has been an integral part of the eument-net since 2017. As part of the organizing committee of this conference in Constanta, Evelyn sees this event as a pivotal opportunity to establish a long lasting network for mentoring programs at Romanian universities, paving the way for women to empower their academic and research careers.

Alexandru Dinu is Project Expert at The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI), a public body of the Central Administration under the ultimate authority of the Ministry of National Education (MEN) in Romania. The mission of UEFISCDI is to promote quality and leadership for higher education,research, development and innovation.

Alexandru Dinu has been involved in implementing projects funded by national and European sources, focusing on innovation and gender equality in research. He was responsible for developing and implementing the Gender Equality Plan (GEP) at UEFISCDI (www.gep.uefiscdi.ro) within the CALIPER project(www.caliper-project.eu) . This involved coordinating the GEP and contributing to knowledge transfer beyond academia.

Within the Genderactionplus project (www.genderaction.eu), he led the capacity-building work package focused on gender equality in research for consortium partners.

In Accelerate Romania project (www.accelerate.gov.ro) he contributed to analyzing the current state of the Romanian innovation entrepreneurial ecosystem. He examined best practice models from similar platforms in Europe and worldwide, developed the Accelerate Romania platform concept, collected and processed data, and maintained the platform with updated information.

He is currently enrolled in PhD in Management in National School of Political Studies and Public Administration in Romania (since 2023) wit the thesis: „Promoting Inclusive Research: Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, Responsible Management, and Intersectional Perspectives“. He graduated the Master studies in Political Communication and Political Journalism at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, University of Bucharest, Romania ( 2020 – 2023) with Master Thesis: „Sexual Education: A Battleground in Anti-Gender Campaigns in Romania“.

Kateřina Svíčková has more than 15 years of experience in the European Commission where she has worked on policy development, implementation, analysis and design in various areas such as security, knowledge for policy, rule of law and gender equality. In her current role as Head of Sector for Gender in the Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation, she steers the development and implementation of policies aiming to achieve gender equality in research and innovation in the European Research Area.

European Commission: Head of Sector – Gender

DG Research & Innovation / Unit Democracy, Equality & Culture

is the President of the National Council for Combating Discrimination from Romania since 2002 where he takes care of the legal representation of the Council, analyzes petitions and complaints and adopts the necessary measures. He is a Hungarian lawyer and politician from Romania in the position of State Counsellor in Vice Prime Minister’s Cabinet in Romanian Government dealing with legal advice, prevention and combating discrimination and protection of national minorities. He has a PhD title of Doctor in the legal regime of citizenship in public international law at University of Bucharest, Faculty of Law.

Head of mentoring programs for women in science

Chair of European Mentoring Network eument-net

Ekaterina Masetkina M.A. is passionate about empowering of female early career researchers and is in charge of several mentoring programs for women in science at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf (HHUD). Under her supervision, four various mentoring groups for different academic target groups are regularly running at HHUD: for female doctoral researchers, for medical interns and for advanced postdocs in German language and a special group for international doctoral and early career postdocs Women in Science & Society (WISS) in English language: https://mentoring.hhu.de/en

Ekaterina has a Master of Arts in European Culture and Economy and works in the Central Gender Equality Office of HHUD. She is keen on improving the gender balance at her university and is involved in events enhancing visibility of female researchers. Ekaterina evaluates the mentoring programs and participates systematically at the international conferences on gender equality in high education. Ekaterina is a regular member of the German professional association Forum Mentoring in Science and Gender Consulting Network. Since 2019, Ekaterina has been acting as a chairperson of the professional network of mentoring coordinators eument-net (European Network of Mentoring Programs for the Advancement of Equal Opportunities and Cultural and Institutional Change in Academia and Research https://www.eument-net.eu/).

Central Gender Equality Office of Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf

University Str. 1, 40225 Dusseldorf, Germany

Title: So that priorities don’t just remain on paper: Institutional challenges for the establishment, development and sustainability of mentoring programmes – Czech case

Kateřina Cidlinská, Ph.D. is a researcher in the field of sociology, higher education studies and gender studies. Her research topics are working conditions in academia, academic careers, exits from academic career, gender inequalities in academia and professional identities. She founded and coordinated mentoring program for early-career researchers, presided EUMENT-NET and Czech PhD Students Association. Currently, she provides consultancy services for research and academic institutions in the field of mentoring and support of professional development of early-career researchers.