Mircea was born in Făgăraş - Romania, a 700-year old city situated in the Carpathians, about 40 miles away from Dracula's Castle. He started studying Chemistry in 7-th grade and really enjoyed it. Having a dedicated teacher that did spectacular demonstrations with relatively limited regard for safety may have had something to do with that. Starting with the 8-th grade Mircea participated in the Chemistry Olympiads, and in 1998 represented Romania at the International Contest in Yakutsk - Russia, where he placed first. For college, Mircea was offered a scholarship from Princeton University, so he moved to beautiful New Jersey in the Fall of 1999. As if not already studying abroad, in the Spring of 2001 Mircea also did a semester abroad at the University of Queensland in Brisbane - Australia. At Princeton, Mircea worked in the labs of Prof. Jeff Schwartz where he did not work with the Schwartz reagent. In the Fall of 2003, Mircea travelled West once again and enrolled in the Chemistry PhD program at the University of California - Berkeley, where he joined the laboratory of Prof. Jeff Long. In Jeff's group he worked on metal-organic framework chemistry, focusing on making new compounds that exhibit increased H2 adsorption capacity and stronger H2 binding for mobile hydrogen storage applications. Upon graduation in the summer of 2008, he joined Prof. Dan Nocera's group at MIT. In Dan's lab Mircea worked on the development and electrochemical study of novel electrocatalysts for O2 evolution from water. In July 2010 Mircea assumed his current position of Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His research focuses on the functional chemistry of inorganic and metal-organic materials, with a current emphasis on porous materials and high-nuclearity metal clusters. Whenever he gets a chance Mircea enjoys hiking, taking photos, and more recently, swimming.