Starting May 10th until June 7th 2014, Ropardo SRL in partnership with ‘Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu is housing three students in Computer Science within the GEAR-UP Program of Howard University in Washington, US. Students are accompanied by their attendant mentors – Dr. Lorraine Fleming, Principal Investigator, and Dr. Wayne Patterson, Co-investigator for GEAR-UP, as well as Ms. Kerry-Ann Hamilton, Director of Strategic Communications and Marketing of Howard University. Students are offered specialty mentoring in computer science by professors of the Engineering Faculty and hours of practice provided at Ropardo premises by its experienced professionals.

The Global Education and Awareness Research Undergraduate Program (GEAR-UP) is a research action addressing the challenge of preparing engineering and science undergraduates for “Leadership for America and the Global Community.” The purpose of the program is to prepare globally engaged scientists and engineers by increasing the number of African-American STEM undergraduates who have international research experience.

The preparedness is designed to be increased through three main directions: education, by exposing students to international scientific and engineering issues; awareness, by enhancing students’ knowledge of engineering and science in an international environment; research, by providing the minority STEM students with the opportunity to participate in an international research experience.

The program is financed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in US and it is the first time that Romania has been invited to participate in this cooperation program, next to other 8 prestigious universities in the world. Enabled by the UNESCO Department within ‘Lucian Blaga’ University, the program shall be organized annually by the Engineering Faculty for the following 3 years.

Ropardo has been a constant partner of ‘Lucian Blaga’ University and other education and culture institutions in Sibiu. For this specific experience-exchange program, our company provides the students with hours of practice under the guidance of experienced professionals within the research project www.mywearproject.info, launched by the European Union and the Seventh Framework Programme. The project is designed to develop new highly flexible production processes to customize safety shoes, work wear and sportswear for elderly, diabetic, overweight and lower able people and new integrated sensors and Software systems able to monitor interactively health parameters at work and during sports activities.

Ropardo SRL, as a consortium partner responsible for the programming and networking part of the project, grants students access to the database of ‘MYWEAR’ project, so that they are able to study aspects related to data privacy and security, the impact of the algorithms and the costs implied. Afterwards, their mentors shall test them on their activities on the project.We feel honored to be part of the GEAR-UP Program at the invitation of the Engineering Faculty within ‘Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu.

The photographs were taken from www.howard.edu/newsroom/releases