On 28 October, the Mediafax 35 gala in Romania marked 35 years since the agency was founded and awarded five scholarships named after Romanian figures in technology, entrepreneurship, education, science and culture. The fourth, the Henri Coandă scholarship for exact and applied sciences, went to Răzvan-Mihai Iacob, a pupil at the Tudor Vianu National College of Informatics in Bucharest.
Host Șerban Pavlu highlighted Iacob’s gold medal at the 2026 International Cybersecurity Olympiad and his work finding flaws in systems that included NASA’s, stressing that the Romanian pupil had also reported those errors to NASA. Romania took part in the olympiad for the first time with a team of four pupils, who won one gold, one silver and two bronze medals.
Asked by Carmen Căpitănescu, marketing director of ALTEX România, how his interest began, Iacob said that in the fifth and sixth grades he was drawn to programming and started looking closely at what happened when code did not behave as intended. That curiosity led him into cybersecurity and vulnerability research.
He has identified several security flaws in applications used internationally, some of which received CVE identifiers. He has also taken part in bug-bounty and Vulnerability Disclosure Programmes, reporting issues to the organisations responsible, including NASA systems, and received official recognition from the organisation. In such programmes, researchers flag problems that attackers could exploit so the institutions or companies can fix them.
Căpitănescu presented the Henri Coandă scholarship, supported by ALTEX România. She said Altex’s mission for more than 33 years has been to bring technology within reach of all Romanians, and that the company believes in the people behind innovation. She told Iacob that his cybersecurity results show talent, passion and perseverance know no borders.
On stage, Iacob said he works in cybersecurity, took part in this year’s international olympiad and brought Romania its first gold medal there. The national team’s other medals were silver for Vladimir Albu and bronze for Ștefan Mihai Filimon and Alexandru Gabriel Stan. The scholarship recognises those results and is described as an investment in a new generation of science and technology specialists.
The evening brought together representatives of the press, the diplomatic corps, public institutions, business, academia, culture and entrepreneurship. The National Bank of Romania hosted the event. Partners thanked by Mediafax included Prime Batteries, Banca Transilvania, One United Properties, Elektra Invest, Citadina98, Avimi, Electromontaj, Anioest, BCR, Transavia, Elis Pavaje, Romgaz, Concelex, BRD, Transgaz, Waldevar, Altex, Tecnic and E-Infra.