In memoriam: Maria Iacob

We were shocked by the news that Maria-Eugenia Iacob passed away on Monday 7th October at the age of 57.

Since 2006, Maria Iacob has been a pillar in the joint research and teaching initiatives championed by the SCS and IEBIS teams together. As a co-initiator of research and education projects, a co-promotor of PhD students, a co-supervisor of BIT master students, or simply a colleague, to many of us she has been an integral part of our day-to-day academic life. 

Those of us heavily involved in BIT teaching experienced first-hand Maria’s generous heart for colleagues and students, her strong sense of responsibility, and her personal commitment to students’ success. For many of us she was a role model for her approach to solving students’ problems and dealing with problem students. She was appreciated as a person of utmost integrity and a collaborator you want to have on your team, especially at difficult times. Compassionate and driven, while pragmatic in her solution-finding style, Maria was never short of ideas on how to make herself useful and help bring things back on track. 

Thanks to Maria in her role of a BIT educational director, our BIT program enjoyed a significant increase of enrollments of international students. Members of the SCS team collaborated with Maria on an ongoing basis to establish relationships with local companies willing to collaborate in research projects and host students as interns for their master’s projects. Her passion for industry-university collaboration was contagious, which led us to start jointly teaching the Empirical and Design Science Research course as well as publishing students’ papers out of industry-university projects.

As a scientist, Maria was internationally recognized for her work. In particular, for her contributions to the ArchiMate enterprise architecture international standard. Her scientific work directly influenced her colleagues and students, but also many people worldwide who benefited from her publications."

Maria will be greatly missed! 

We wish Maria’s family a lot of strength in coping with this great loss.