In the rapidly evolving landscape of emerging technologies, few individuals possess both the technical expertise and the creative spirit generating humanitarian vision to truly guide innovation toward human flourishing. Dr. Mihaela Ulieru stands as a rare exception. As President of the IMPACT Institute for the Digital Economy, Dr. Ulieru has devoted her career to ensuring that the convergence of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things serves to empower individuals rather than control them.
Her journey from a curious child watching limited screenings of Star Trek and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in communist Romania to becoming one of the world’s foremost experts on distributed intelligent systems reads like a technological hero’s tale. But unlike many Silicon Valley narratives that end with billion-dollar valuations, the value of Dr. Ulieru’s story is marked by a consistent commitment to democratization, transparency, and human empowerment.
“I wanted to build robots and explore the mysteries of the Universe,” says Dr. Ulieru about her childhood inspirations. This early fascination set her on a path that would lead through multiple continents, distinguished academic appointments, and eventually to advisory roles for governments and organizations worldwide, including the World Economic Forum.
Pioneering The Paradigm Shift
The technological landscape is filled with incremental innovators, but Dr. Ulieru belongs to a rarer category: the trailblazers, frontier researchers, paradigm shifters. Her most significant contribution, “Emergent Engineering,” fundamentally challenges traditional engineering approaches that rely on top-down control and predictability.
This revolutionary framework which she introduced two decades ago and which only now, with the latest technological advances, can reveal its true power – enables systems to evolve organically through multi-agent cooperation, real-time data feedback, and AI-driven self-optimization. By embedding biological and neural-inspired mechanisms into technological infrastructures, Dr. Ulieru’s research has paved the way for self-regulating, decentralized intelligent systems that thrive in uncertain, rapidly changing environments.
“Emergent Engineering redefines how complex distributed systems are designed,” she explains in her groundbreaking publication. This approach allows systems to dynamically adapt to unpredictable conditions, ensuring resilience, efficiency, and scalability in domains ranging from cyber-physical ecosystems to blockchain governance and autonomous industrial networks.
The Lone Voice at Davos: Fighting for Blockchain’s Recognition
Long before blockchain became a buzzword at corporate boardrooms, Dr. Ulieru recognized its potential to transform power structures and democratize access to resources. As the only woman on the Future and Emerging Technologies Council at the World Economic Forum in 2014, she encountered significant resistance when advocating for blockchain’s inclusion among the WEF’s Top 10 emerging technologies.
“I encountered harsh opposition, felt disparaged and was strongly discouraged by Council fellows who were deriding the, quite young at the time, ‘crypto’ industry, emphasizing only the negative aspects prevalent in the media,” Dr. Ulieru has revealed. Yet, her deep understanding of the technology and its potential for positive transformation led her to stand firm against the scepticism of her peers.
Her persistence paid off. In 2016, blockchain finally made it to the WEF’s list of top emerging technologies, helping legitimize a sector that would go on to revolutionize finance, supply chains, and governance models worldwide. This victory exemplifies Dr. Ulieru’s career-long pattern of championing technologies that empower individuals against entrenched institutional resistance.
From Factory Floors to Intelligent Ecosystems: Revolutionizing Manufacturing
While blockchain advocacy represents one facet of Dr. Ulieru’s impact, her foundational work in the field of Industrial Informatics has arguably had an even more profound influence on modern manufacturing. As one of the founders of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN), leading a global community scientists Dr. Ulieru helped establish a global forum for advancing intelligent industrial systems that continues to shape Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing today.
“I was among very few who were recognizing the need for a paradigm shift in industrial automation and smart manufacturing,” she notes about this period of her career. Her work with the International Holonic Manufacturing Systems Consortium and as Board Member of Singapore’s SIMTech Manufacturing Institute positioned her at the forefront of developing adaptive, self-configuring manufacturing systems powered by cooperative autonomous robots—a childhood passion realized through cutting-edge research.
The IEEE INDIN Conference series she created has become an established platform driving innovations in smart factories and AI-driven industrial automation, with discoveries published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics which she also pioneered and co-founded with George Fodor cementing Industrial Informatics as a key domain in the evolution of intelligent manufacturing systems.
CHALLENGING THE AI STATUS QUO
In an era where artificial intelligence dominates headlines and investment dollars, Dr. Ulieru offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective that cuts through both the hype and the fear. Her current passion focuses on addressing what she terms the “AI Dilemma”—how to design artificial intelligence systems with ethics embedded in their fabric.
Beyond Alignment: Elevating Humans, Not Machines
While many technologists worry about aligning AI with human values to prevent existential risks, Dr. Ulieru flips this narrative on its head. “The fact is that AI is at most emulating humanity and especially those who are designing and implementing it,” she argues. “What we need instead is to elevate our own awareness and ethics to a level that, when emulated, will only lead to good coming out of any system emulating our behaviour.”
This perspective transforms the “AI alignment problem” into a “Humanity Alignment with Ethical Behaviour” matter—a profound shift that places responsibility back on human creators rather than their creations.
Dr. Ulieru also challenges the anthropomorphizing of AI systems, emphasizing that language models predict words statistically without true comprehension. “AI can generate convincing text but doesn’t grasp context, emotions, or deeper meaning like humans do,” she clarifies, pushing back against the tendency to attribute human-like understanding capabilities to these systems.
Transparency as Power: The Case for Open Source AI
For Dr. Ulieru, the solution to many AI governance challenges mirrors the approach needed for the “social dilemma” posed by social media platforms. Just as platform owners can manipulate users through hidden algorithms, AI developers can potentially do the even worse through closed-source large language models.
“The way forward is definitely open-source systems, where one can see what’s behind in the code and identify the eventual ‘traps’,” she insists. This transparency-first approach extends beyond mere technical openness to include embedding ancient and indigenous wisdom and spiritual traditions into AI architectures—ensuring these systems foster rather than suppress ethical behavior, creativity, and collective thriving.
TECHNOLOGY AS LIBERATION
Throughout her extensive body of work—spanning over 100 peer-reviewed publications and 300+ keynote addresses—a consistent theme emerges: technology should serve as a tool for human liberation rather than control.
Digital Lifelines: Connecting the Unconnected World
This philosophy is evident in Dr. Ulieru’s involvement with projects like SingularityNET, which, for example, through a recent collaboration with Bitgrit connects the decentralized AI platform with a community of over 35,000 data scientists to develop solutions tailored to unfolding world challenges. By leveraging this talent pool, the partnership creates AI services, much in the manner of Dr. Ulieru’s holonic enterprise paradigm for optimizing supply chains, improving healthcare delivery, and enhancing financial services in regions that have historically lacked access to cutting-edge technology.
Similarly, her work with the Cardano Impact Community demonstrates how blockchain can drive sustainable development and economic empowerment in vulnerable regions. The initiative spans a plethora of projects featured in the “Cardano Impact Report”. All these projects use the Cardano blockchain to support humanitarian and environmental projects, including reforestation and ecosystem regeneration in Madagascar, while fostering economic growth through local agroecology and food security initiatives.
The Holodeck Revolution: Work Reimagined
Dr. Ulieru’s vision for the future of work offers a compelling alternative to both techno-utopian and dystopian narratives. She envisioned already decades ago what she calls “The Holodeck as Future Workground”—a fluid, adaptive, and creative work environment enabled by mixed-reality technology and blockchain-based reward systems.
“Imagine you wake up and switch on your ‘Holodeck’… There you are presented with several opportunities which require your unique expertise,” she describes. “The work will be very fluid, adaptive and creative, empowering those who need advanced skills to select the most appropriate person for the particular job they have.”
This model represents an “uberization” of work freed from the “digital feudalism” of current platform economies—a truly empowering democratic working environment where participants choose their contributions and receive direct rewards through blockchain-enabled self-sovereign identities.
THE MENTOR BEHIND THE INNOVATORS
While Dr. Ulieru’s direct contributions to technological advancement are substantial, her impact as a mentor may prove equally significant. Among her most notable mentees is Garrett Camp, co-founder of Uber, who worked under her supervision on his Master’s thesis titled “InOrder: Enhancing Google via Stigmerging Query Refinement.”
From Lab to Unicorn: The Garrett Camp Story
Camp’s journey from graduate student to tech entrepreneur illustrates the qualities Dr. Ulieru values in successful innovators: tenacity, persuasion capability, and the drive to implement and deliver useful products. When Camp first approached her about joining her “Adaptive Information Systems” lab, Dr. Ulieru was initially hesitant, knowing he wanted to leave another respected researcher’s supervision.
After “grilling” him for about an hour, she became convinced of his potential and accepted him into her lab. Camp went on to apply the concepts from his thesis work to create StumbleUpon, a platform helping researchers find articles of interest, before co-founding Uber—now a global transportation giant.
Global Talent Scout: Opening Doors for the Overlooked
Dr. Ulieru’s mentorship extends far beyond Camp to numerous talented individuals from around the world. She describes one of the most rewarding aspects of her career as “working with amazingly talented people from all over the world, giving to many of them opportunities by funding their research from my grants and fighting for their visas to join my research lab.”
Her particular focus on empowering students from countries with limited opportunities—Nigeria, Iran, Pakistan, Argentina—stems from her own experience as a young student in Romania who was “rescued” by her PhD supervisor from Germany, who gave her the opportunity to fulfil her calling.
NAVIGATING THE INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM
Despite her technological optimism, Dr. Ulieru maintains a clear-eyed view of the challenges facing innovation today. When asked about the biggest obstacles for tech startups, she doesn’t hesitate to identify “a bad regulatory environment” as the primary innovation killer.
Breaking the Red Tape: The Battle Against Bureaucracy
“Unelected bureaucrats who have no idea about technology and what it really entails, who put red tape simply because they are unable to understand it,” she explains. Combined with “corruption and lobbying from various interest groups,” these forces can easily suffocate promising innovations before they have a chance to develop.
Her advice to young entrepreneurs reflects this reality: beyond identifying where novel solutions can make a difference, she encourages them to “surround themselves with good mentors who can not only guide them in achieving their dreams but also open possibilities unavailable otherwise from their network, for funding and championing regulatory support.”
The Outsider’s Advantage: Embracing Intellectual Rebellion
For young researchers, she offers different wisdom: “Follow your intuition and passion even if (and especially when) it goes against the mainstream accepted trends and theories.” She recalls how complexity science was marginalized—”a Cinderella without a proper place in any funding agency”—when she began her work. Today, the multi-agent self-organizing paradigms she championed form the core of the cutting-edge AI Revolution.
THE QUANTUM HORIZON
Looking toward the future, Dr. Ulieru sees quantum developments as the next frontier that will transform both AI and blockchain. Drawing on recent scientific discoveries about quantum fields as the “hidden reality” forming the substrate of the physical world, she points to the work of Federico Faggin (inventor of the microprocessor and touchscreen) and Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose, who have posited that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, stemming from quantum fields.
Consciousness as Code: The Quest for Quantum AI
“From the perspective of Artificial Intelligence these revelations make quantum computing a necessity for the creation of Conscious Machines (if we are ever to achieve this…),” she observes. Meanwhile, she predicts quantum computing will ultimately “obsolesce blockchain as we know it, opening much better possibilities for cybersecurity and distributed finance.”
A LEGACY OF DEMOCRATIZED KNOWLEDGE
When asked about the legacy she hopes to leave, Dr. Ulieru describes a vision that extends far beyond technological innovation to address fundamental human inequalities:
The Global Brain: A Knowledge Network for All
“The creation of a decentralized, AI-driven knowledge and innovation network that democratizes access to education, research, and problem-solving tools worldwide. Such a system would accelerate scientific discovery, bridge educational inequalities, empower local economies, and help us solve humanity’s biggest challenges.”
Her vision encompasses decentralized AI for governance and policy, global open-source R&D, a blockchain-enabled knowledge economy, and ethical AI access for all. The unifying principle: “Knowledge is the ultimate equalizer—it fuels economic growth, empowers individuals, and accelerates technological and social progress.”
THE SKILLS FOR TOMORROW
In a world increasingly dominated by intelligent machines, Dr. Ulieru offers a deceptively simple assessment of the most critical skill for future success: “The ability to ask the right question.”
Beyond Information: The Art of Inquiry in the AI Age
This insight, which she traces back to her first reading of Ray Kurzweil’s “The Age of Intelligent Machines” in 1990, has gained new relevance with the advent of tools like ChatGPT. As our devices become increasingly capable of guiding us through complex tasks without cumbersome manuals, the premium shifts to clear communication about objectives and critical evaluation of machine-generated responses.
For businesses preparing to remain competitive in an AI-driven world, Dr. Ulieru recommends adopting the principles from her “Emergent Engineering” paradigm: agility, adaptability, and ethical implementation. “Given the level of uncertainty, the best way to approach the future is to be as agile and adaptive as possible to be able to ride this uncertainty wave rather than be crushed by it.”
FREEDOM AS THE ULTIMATE GOAL
Throughout her extensive career spanning robotics, distributed systems, blockchain advocacy, and AI ethics, a singular value has guided Dr. Ulieru’s work: freedom. “To me, the most important thing is freedom,” she states, “and I believe that there is no greater purpose for human life but to know ourselves at the deepest possible level, seeking our authentic selves.”
Technology as Self-Discovery: The Humane Future
This philosophical foundation undergirds her technological vision: “Using technology to supercharge human potential—not by replacing us with AI, but by augmenting our intelligence and collaboration to unprecedented levels, tapping into collective intelligence at a global scale.”
In an era where technological determinism often frames humans as inevitably subservient to their creations, Dr. Ulieru offers a profoundly different narrative—one where technology serves as the vehicle for human self-discovery, connection, and liberation.
As blockchain, AI, and quantum computing continue to reshape our world at an accelerating pace, Dr. Ulieru’s integrated approach to technological development—balancing technical innovation with ethical considerations and human empowerment—provides a valuable compass for navigating our collective digital future.