On May 20, the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission and EducationUSA had the pleasure of hosting the American Studies student conference titled „Considering America: Spaces, Cultures, and Representations”. The conference was organized by the American Studies program at the University of Bucharest and brought together undergraduate as well as graduate students presenting papers on topics pertaining to American culture, from popular culture to film studies and trauma studies. The conference began with opening remarks graciously offered by Ronald E. Hawkins, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy, Associate Professor Octavian Roske, Head of the English Department, University of Bucharest, and Dr. Rodica Mihaila, Executive Director of the Fulbright Commission and founder of the American Studies program at the University of Bucharest. Mr. Hawkins was also the keynote speaker of the conference, delivering an engaging address titled “Telling America’s Story”, followed by a Q&A session which prompted a diverse range of questions. The conference then continued with presentations scheduled in three panels and ended with the concluding remarks made by Associate Professor Roxana Oltean, coordinator of the American Studies program. The full program of the conference can be found here.

Alexandra-Maria Bocşe, Fellow on Transatlantic Relations at Harvard University and Fulbright-Schuman Grantee, gave on 6 May 2016 a talk at the Belfer Library, Harvard Kennedy School on "The U.S. and European energy security: recent developments". She argued that the 2014 Ukrainian crisis generated a renewed U.S. interest in European security in general and European energy security in particular. The talk discussed the impact that US shale gas exports, as well as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, might have on the energy security of the EU. It concluded that, although great progress in transatlantic cooperation on energy was achieved so far, additional work needs to be undertaken to implement high level political commitments taken in 2014 by officials on both sides of the Atlantic. The talk was very well received by the public. Alexandra is currently conducting research at Harvard on energy governance and EU-U.S. interactions in the field of energy.

On Tuesday, May 17, from 4:00 to 5:00 pm, a group of U.S. and international students from Indiana University paid us a visit to tell us more about their school and share their personal experience with the Fulbright Commission staff and prospective applicants to U.S. universities.

The students are currently in Romania as part of the international internship program Indiana University (Kelley School of Business) offers, in partnership with the Bucharest University of Economic Studies. This year’s cohort has been coordinated by Professor Cătălin Albu, Faculty of Accounting and Management Information Systems, Fulbright Senior Alumnus.

Dr. Viorel Nastasa, Fulbright (Senior) Visiting Scholar 2015-2016 in the field of Optics/Laser Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and researcher at the National Institute for Laser Plasma and Radiation Physics, Magurele, has informed us about a forthcoming article to be published in the Optics Letters. The article titled “Statistical Dispersion Relation for Spatially Broadband Fields” has as co-authors two other specialists in this field: Minguang Shan - Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China, and Gabriel Popescu  - Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Optics Letters  is a journal, published twice each month, where readers look for the latest discoveries in optics. Dr. Nastasa emphasized that the data used in this article were acquired during his Fulbright grant at the University of Illinois.