I am an internist and infectious diseases specialist. I was born and did my medical studies in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. After finishing the medical studies in 1993, I moved to Radboud University Nijmegen for the PhD and clinical specialization with the group of Prof. Dr. Jos van der Meer. After another year as a post-doc at the University of Colorado, Denver, in the lab of Prof. Charles Dinarello, I moved back to Nijmegen, where I work as a Professor of Experimental Medicine since 2008.

My key interest is to understand the regulation of innate immune responses during severe infections, such as disseminated fungal infections or sepsis. In addition, our group works on the adaptation of innate immunity after infection or vaccination: this is a de facto innate immune memory that we recently termed trained immunity. The reason for this interest is my firm belief that innate immune mechanisms are some of the most important components of host defense, and at the same time some of the least approached from a therapeutic point of view. 

Most of my exposure is with science environments in the Netherlands and United States. Of course the major ways of approaching research are very similar. However, there is a much more collaborative sphere in the Netherlands compared with United States, where people and labs are much more competitive with each other. Romania is at this moment at the very beginning of building a research culture, but this has started to change fast in the last couple of years.

I have had a very fruitful collaboration with researchers at LIMES for several years already. It was very stimulating to perform these collaborative projects together, and we have observed how nice our expertise is complementary. It was thus an organic process in which we thought to improve this collaboration even further by joining the LIMES.

Be enthusiastic about what you are doing and work together with others. Never be afraid to collaborate: the vast majority of colleagues are nice, they want to help and will teach you a lot. And in the end it is much more fun to work together with many people.

It is in fact pretty easy, because Nijmegen and Bonn are in fact close. I already arranged dates when I will be in Bonn to discuss with the colleagues, to organize the lab and supervise the work.

I love to hike in the mountains and I love to read science-fiction. I actually even wrote a science fiction novel myself: North-West Passage to the Moon.