My dream became reality ...

doc. dr. Irina Elena Cristea, Center for Systems and Information Technology University of Nova Gorica

Since the elementary school I have been fascinated and attracted by Mathematics, my favourite subject during all the years of school. It was always a pleasure for me to help my colleagues or friends in studying and understanding this wonderful world of Math, very complicated and incomprehensible for many pupils. Thus at the end of the high school I knew very well that I must continue on this way, wishing to become a Math teacher: giving me the possibility to solve mathematical problems and, in the same way, to show to the others the other face of Mathematics, how beautiful it is. The pedagogical part of this job was (and it still remains) very important for me.

In 2001 I graduated in Mathematics at the University of Iasi, Romania (my native country) and after two years I obtained my Master degree in Algebra and Geometry at the same university, I was more and more attracted by the research world. I took the decision to abbandon the teaching school career and continue with a PhD. in Mathematics, at the University of Constanta, Romania. In 2003 I got an Erasmus scholarship at the University of Udine, Italy, where I started my research activity on algebraic hyperstructures, a theoretical field of discrete mathematics. After finishing my doctoral studies and due to family reasons, I moved to Udine, where I continued my postdoctoral studies, being the principal investigator of two national grants.

I am currently an assistant professor at University of Nova Gorica (since 2012), leading research on algebraic hyperstructures and their connections with Fuzzy Sets. It was a new challange for me to work in a new country, to learn about a new culture (not much different from the Romanian one), to move to a smaller but very ambitious university, with a strong orientation towards the internationalization. Here I had the possibility to grow as a researcher, to enhance and enlarge my collaborations with other institutions in Italy, Romania, the Czech Republic, Iran, China, Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Saudi Arabia. Together with a professor from Iran, I wrote the monography »Fuzzy Algebraic hyperstructures: an introduction«, published in 2015 by Springer. As the first in its genre, it includes a number of topics, most of which reflect our past and current research.

I also dedicate a lot of time and energy to my classes, being involved in the pedagogical activities of several schools at the University of Nova Gorica and with a great pleasure I try to transfer as much of my experience and knowledge as possible to my students.