Oana Silvia Serea har fått professoropprykk

I tillegg til å vere nyslått professor, jobbar Oana med å lære seg norsk. Intervjuet er likevel gjort på engelsk.

What is your field of research?

- My field of research is "control theory". Mathematical control theory can be seen as a field of mathematics relevant to the control of physical processes / systems, and as an interdisciplinary field originating in engineering and mathematics. It also found application in other sciences, such as economics or biology. One of the key aims in my field is to obtain an optimal output from a system, while controlling various input variables. For example, one may want to obtain optimal householding results from one's partner, while controlling the input of, say, food and beer. Too much is not to good, but neither is too little. Actually, in this example we deal with a stochastic control problem, because the system may be affected by random events such as invitation to a party or bar, soccer match on tv etc.

How did your career as researcher start?

- It started in Brittany (France): the project I was working on during my master studies in Rennes at the beginning of 2000 was published in a scientific journal. This also initiated my PhD studies in Brest, which is known to be one the rainiest, windiest, and darkest cities in France. Thus, this period constituted a good preparation for the winter times in Bergen.

Which project(s) are you currently working on?

- A couple of small projects are going on with my Ph.D. students from abroad, since one of them will defend in July, another one in September and two next year. Subject of a larger project of mine is the optimal allocation of healthcare resources. Together with colleagues from Los Alamos, St. Petersburg, and Perpignan we have been working on an HIV setting but intend to generalize our results to many other diseases. This can lead to very interesting projects for the future development of the Ph.D. program ICT Engineering. Last, learning Norwegian is also an important project at the moment: I just finished the first course, and want to work a bit more for the next one.

If you were allowed full freedom and unlimited amounts of money and time – what research would you perform?

- In this dream situation I would do climate research: the impact of different climatic conditions on the human ability to perceive different aroma in white and red wine accompanied of course by good meat would be a very interesting topic. As project leader I would supervise parts of the experiments myself, e.g. those carried out in tropical regions between October and April.