Reconnecting with President Nicușor Dan: The World’s Only Olympic Mathematician Head of State


It was a pleasure and an honor to meet in December 2025 and in January 2026 in Paris with the President of Romania, Nicușor Dan—the only head of State in the world to have been an Olympic medalist (golden medal) in mathematics. His leadership offers a unique opportunity for Romania’s future if he can unite the ideas and efforts of all Romanians to build an innovative, powerful, and reliable Romania as an European and international strategic partner.

As a former colleague on the Olympic team (myself in physics and President Dan in mathematics), I am confident in the role of Romania to contribute to the creation of the future strong Europe of Defense and Innovation inspired by the French President Emmanuel Macron. Here it is an article with more details that could encourage us all to trust in a better future : https://www.interviewfrancophone.net/2026-coalition-des-volontaires

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Published by: PhD. Florin Paun

Experienced in multi sector Industries, having been successful Scientist and R&D Coordinator myself, I chose to dedicate my professional life in helping other researchers to make come true their technological dreams by embracing a career in Innovation to support them in bridging the gap between new Technologies and Market. Scientists being more “Knowledge oriented”, one of my constant struggles was to complete the Entrepreneurial team with the right Entrepreneur on board… or reveal the “Entrepreneur” in them. Based on my multidisciplinary engineering background, evolving constantly in a multicultural environment, I upgraded my knowledge with innovation economics at MIT Sloan (in this particular positive tension environment) and started to learn operationally hands-on through successes and failures. Thus, I have seen, understood and qualified more than 200 projects of Innovation and Entrepreneurial ventures based on Advanced Technologies. More than 70ty of them become successful Technology Transfer agreements under my coordination and through amazing “champions” teams’ efforts I always built and sustained. All through my career I had the chance to be actively involved in Shaping Ecosystems and work with all the actors on their strategies of Innovation and Growth while launching R&D consortia, launching Agile Tech-Demonstrators or supporting Business Development for Competitiveness Clusters, Large Corporations, Start-Ups and R&D Laboratories. Shaping Ecosystems and Clustering Technologies around Business Cases carried-out by right Entre(Intra)preneurial teams is thus now a Belief. I also had the chance to understand that although important, the Human aspects are not enough to bring ideas to life through successful applications on the targeted market… Process, practices, tools are extremely important too and thus I developed new tools like, Asymmetries Compensation within Collaborative Innovation process, Demand Readiness Level vs Technology Readiness Level, Risk & Benefits Sharing Co-Development Contracts… this brought me to become an Expert in Challenging Business Models, in Selecting and Qualifying Innovation Projects and Ventures and… have the honor to become an European Innovation Council Jury Pilot Member. As multidisciplinary Scientist, Entrepreneur, Investor, Lecturer, Speaker & Innovation Advocate, I will be honored to meet passionate and hard worker entrepreneurs serving their dreams and the future of the humanity.

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