Mihaela Madaras

Board of Advisors 
Founding Angel 
RandD Director, Innovation and Sustainability
RandD Project Management, Innovation, Sustainability and Innovation in Sustainability. Passionate about the environment and finding creative ways to protect it. Systems thinking, innovating and taking novel ideas to implementation.

RandD Director, Innovation and Sustainability

Mihaela is an Innovation and Sustainability leader at Sun Chemical Corp. where she leads an R&D team dedicated to developing novel sustainable materials.

After she obtained her Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Mihaela held the position of Assistant Professor in the Organic Chemistry Department before coming to the US to pursue a PhD degree in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to her PhD, she also recently obtained a Professional Certificate in Sustainability from MIT that allows her to be directly involved in reducing the impact of the industry, especially of the chemical industry, on the environment.

Her career path brought her to different cities in the US over the past 30+ years: Chapel Hill NC, Columbus OH, Rochester NY, St Louis MO and finally Cincinnati OH where she currently resides. Everywhere she lived, she developed strong relationships with Romanians from the diaspora who became her extended family.

Maintaining strong ties with Romania is always a top priority for Mihaela. The years spent as faculty at UBB left a strong impression on the importance of college education in shaping the future of the country. Mihaela joined RUF as a Founding Angel and is now a Member for the RUF Advisory Board to be able to participate in and propose projects that have an impact on education but also on protecting the environment. These are two important focus areas for RUF that overlap perfectly with her interests.

Her most ambitious project is to bring back at least one Romanian University into the top 100 in the world by creating strong alliances with US Universities. This is where the power and influence of a strong organization such as RUF and Global Romania can be a meaningful force for change.

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