Institutul de Calcul “Tiberiu Popoviciu” (ICTP) is one of the mathematical institutes of the Romanian Academy, which is coordinated by the Section of Mathematical Sciences.

The Institute is administered by the Cluj-Napoca Branch of the Romanian Academy.

The Institute is performing fundamental research in Numerical Analysis, Numerical Modeling, Approximation Theory, and other applied fields of Mathematics.

The Head of ICTP is Dr. Emil Cătinaş.

Historical landmarks

In 1951, the Romanian Academy founded the Mathematical Section of the Cluj-Napoca Branch of the Romanian Academy, formed by the members of the Seminar on Numerical Analysis lead by the savant Tiberiu Popoviciu; the Section was located in the building from no. 37, Republicii St.

In 1957, the Section was transformed into Institutul de Calcul and was allowed to hire engineers, physicists and technicians, in order to build electronic computers (Popoviciu’s vision).

Three computers were built here from scratch between 1957-1968:

  • MARICA (1959) – experimental;
  • DACICC-1 (1963) – the first Romanian computer with transistors, RAM, and having a mathematical library;
  • DACICC-200 (1969) – the first Romanian computer with OS and compiler; it was the most powerful computer made by the Romanians.

In 1975, the dictator N. Ceausescu dissolved the mathematical Institutes of the Romanian Academy (in Bucharest, Iasi and Cluj-Napoca). From 54 employees, our Institute remained with 6, within the Babes-Bolyai University. Tiberiu Popoviciu died a few months later.

In 1990, the Institute returned to the Romanian Academy and started to evolve.

In 2003, after a trial, the Institute was evacuated from the building by the Babes-Bolyai University, and since then its residence is in two apartments in a block of flats at the side of the city.

The Institute has established an important cooperation agreement with Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), which allows the access to supercomputing facilities and the realization of important numerical applications.

For a detailed history of the Institute, including old documents and photos, please consult the website Institute history in Romanian (please allow your browser to translate the page in English).