Ambassador Hamilton: Romania still has image-related issues in Western Europe, Canada and United States

Romania continues to have image-related issues in Western Europe, Canada and the United States of America and it is not fair for that to happen, Canada's Ambassador in Bucharest Kevin Hamilton stated during Tuesday's meeting with the leadership of Gheorghe Asachi Technical University in Iasi (TUIASI), according to a press release sent by the university to AGERPRES on Wednesday. 

Canada's Ambassador argued that he intends to redress this misguided image during his mandate in Romania. 

Although it has achieved considerable progress in the last 30 years (...) the image is that of a post-communist country still greatly relying on agriculture when the reality is, well, the one in your institution, which participates in the most innovative research projects in Europe and in the world, among which I mention domains such robotics, chemical engineering, artificial intelligence and also others. This is the new Romania, the real Romania, the head of the Canadian diplomacy declared. 

In the ambassador's presence a collaboration protocol between Iasi's University and Ottawa University was signed, the two having completed this spring an understanding memorandum. The rectors of the two universities, Dan Cascaval and Ioan Nistor, respectively, former student of the University in Iasi, signed an Erasmus+agreement between the two higher education institutions. 

"If Erasmus was a strictly European programme, Erasmus+ provides Canadians with the opportunity to come to Europe and Europeans to go to Canada. When the University in Ottawa signed that memorandum with TUIASI, the idea was to initiate such Erasmus+ programmes. Thus, we will have students, graduate students and doctoral students who will come here for intervals of up to four months but also teachers and academic staff and our hope is that we conclude similar agreements in the future," Ioan Nistor from Ottawa University affirmed. 

"We have indeed an impressive, modern infrastructure. Moreover, we have seven specialisations in English, undergraduate and graduate studies and we would like to increase their number in the future. We have good relations with the local and central authorities, but also with the business milieu and our graduates join companies all across the world," Dan Cascaval completed.