Professor Vasile Baltac
Prof. Vasile Baltac is a well-known personality of IT&C in Romania. He has a research and management background. Born in 1940, he graduated "summa cum laude" the POLITEHNICA University a Timisoara and started his long career in information technology as a computer pioneer in the early '1960s at MECIPT, a first generation computer built by Romanian scientists. He continued his research studies in 1966/67 at the University of Cambridge, England in the Mathematical laboratory led by Sir M. V. Wilkes, FRS, the father of microprogramming. In Cambridge he became a member of Corpus Christi College, one of the oldest colleges of the university.
At his return to Romania he was soon asked to contribute to the development of the Romanian computer industry and he was first the scientific manager and afterwards general manager of the Institute of Computer Technology till 1982. In this position he coordinated important national projects leading to the creation of the Felix computer family, "Independent" minicomputers and of the first Romanian industrial software activity. Dr. Baltac continued his career being manager of important national IT- related research and manufacturing organizations. In the period 1990-1994 he held positions of Secretary of state in the Ministry of Industry. He has published books and papers on computers, information technology and society, management, digital divide, eReadiness, history of computers, etc. Since 1962 he has had a university direct or associate presence from assistant to full professorship.
Dr. Baltac is now the president of ATIC - IT&C Association of Romania (www.atic.org.ro), university professor of information systems, senior member of IEEE-Computer Society and of other professional societies. As president of ATIC he fathered recently a successful national project for IT skills dissemination under cooperation with CEPIS (Council of European Professional and Informatics Societies - www.cepis.org), known as ECDL/ICDL project.In November 2006 he was elected Vice-President of CEPIS in charge with Eduction & Research and of Vice-Chairman WITSA in charge with Eastern Europe developmenys.
His activity has been recognized by various awards, latest in 2003 when he received The National Order of Merit in the rank of Knight from the Romanian Presidency.
Dr. Baltac is involved in Rotary activities as member of Rotary Club Old Court Bucharest, being a past president of the club and in 2007-2008 assistant governor of the District 2241 Romania and Republic of Moldova.
He currently participates at various IT-related national policy coordination projects, and has activities within the European Union, UNIDO, UN Economic Commission for Europe, Stability Pact, World Bank, WSIS, WITSA, as well as of several Central and East Europe regional IT&C initiatives.
He is listed in WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD and WHO'S WHO IN ROMANIA, received the ROMANIAN ACADEMY AWARD for works in software engineering and was nominated as The Entrepreneur of the Year and The Best Promoter of Internet in Romania. Recently, in 2003 he was awarded The National Order For Merit of Romania with the rank of Knight by the President of Romania. Prof. Baltac is active in community and social projects as member of the Rotary Club "Old Court" Bucharest. Among his most recent international papers: "Digital Divide - the Four Basic Pillars of Bridging" General Public Policy Conference, Kuala Lumpur, September 2005, "Application trends and social issues of information and communication technologies " key-note speaker at the TF 6 panel "ICT - Application Trends & Social Issues", Technology Foresight Summit 2003, UNIDO, Budapest March 2003; South Eastern Europe: Digital Divide or Digital Opportunity? EU "Information Science and Technology" IST 2000, Nice, November 2000; Digital Divide: Beyond the Statistics, (author) 3rd World Summit on Internet and Multimedia, Montreux, Switzerland, October 2002; E-Commerce in the field of B2B relations: A View from Romania, "Eastern Europe and E-Commerce" Conference, German Society for Foreign Affairs, Berlin 3-4 April 2000.