Alex Popescu
pax@mioritics.ro · linkedin.com/in/alex1 · pax.mioritics.ro · github: pax · gov2-ro
15+ years in full-stack development,
tech consulting, data integration,
digital transformation, IA, UX.
End-to-end project delivery: from requirements gathering,
business logic, technical architecture to full-stack execution, client training.
Wide-ranging experience across commercial,
academic, and civil society sectors.
Build custom PHP/Python/JS apps, API integrations;
data
engineering (extraction, transformation, analysis and dashboarding).
Accustomed to various BI platforms (Tableau, Looker, Evidence, Observable)
Deep WordPress customization experience; migration and integration between diverse CMSs and database engines.
Technical coordination with contractors and internal teams. Specs, workflows, and documentation for complex development projects.
Actively exploring and integrating LLM assistance, prompting and orchestration pipelines.
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Independent IT consultant ★ 2009/present Technical expert (ANPDCA) ★ Jun 2020/Sept 2023 Part of the team that supervised the procurement and development of a large-scale EU-funded digital transformation project with the National Authority for the Protection of the Rights of the Child and Adoption. IA/UX specialist (Tremend Consulting) ★ 2009/2011 Now part of the Publicis group, I joined Tremend in the early days, working for clients such as Hotnews (the biggest Romanian newspaper then and now), IOSS, Romanian National Soccer Federation, World Music Services, ALRO etc. |
Art Director (DDB Bucharest) ★ 2005/2007 Romanian chapter of DDB, one of the largest ATL advertising networks. Responsible for the visual concept and execution of advertising campaigns, branding, from initial idea to final product, across all media. Accounts: McDonald's, Henkel, Alpha Bank, RDS/RCS, Siveco, Hercesa, Ozone Labs etc CTO & partner (ITEM media) ★ 2002/2005 web development & digital marketing agency. Co-founder (Asociatia Mioritics) ★ 2003/present NGO promoting active cultural travel, heritage preservation and youth mobility. 2020 recipient of the Presidential Cultural Heritage Order |
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Expert Forum (EFOR)
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Bucharest based think tank, focused on public policy and public governance reform, public sector
integrity;
party finance and monitoring elections; fighting against fake news and disinformation and active citizenship. As a long-time (10+ years) collaborator I have helped EFOR on multiple projects, spanning from presentation websites to complex data exploration pipelines, dashboards, maps, custom apps, guidelines and digital security training. |
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banipartide.ro – evolution of Romanian financing of electoral campaigns, the sources of income and the expenses of political parties. Included scraping the official gazette and other sources for financial data in non-tabular or computer unfriendly shapes and formats. Funded by International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) via CEELI Institute [Google Sheets → SQLite → PHP API + Apache eCharts] fact-hub.eu – Fake media monitoring, brings together investigative journalists, social media experts and political analysts under the umbrella of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) [WP] |
votcorect.ro; fiecarevot.ro - Independent election monitoring & observers management platforms; custom CRM for enrollment and management, including voting section assignments, real time dashboards & reports, public complaints/issue tracker and call center support [WP, sometimes headless] Misc maps, political migration, clientelism (Romania, Moldova, Georgia - for idfi.ge), local infrastructure etc. My Europe, School for Democracy [Leaflet] |
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European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building (ERCAS)
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Another long term collaboration, ERCAS (under Hertie
School, then LUISS), hands of development,
data engineering and technical coordination for various projects: |
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EU Compass (BRIDGEGAP – WP1) Managed the integration of different sources for the EU Compass analytical database, pooling 50+ national level indicators (IntegrityWatch, OpenTender, Corruption Perceptions Index etc), allowing researchers to study regulatory gaps. API Integration with YouControl (FollowTheMoney) [Built with Evidence] Corruption Risk Forecast – Corruption and transparency indicators for over 120 countries· dashboards, data integration. Funded by Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) |
EuroPAM – a comparative database, Assessments of in-law and in-practice efforts to enhance the transparency of public administration and the accountability of public officials, extension of the Public Accountability Mechanisms Initiative (PAM) of the World Bank. Static generated website, uses a custom build system that imports data from .xlsx files. Index of Public Integrity (IPI) – a composite quantitative index of the status of the state of control of corruption in 109 countries. anticorrp.eu – Anticorruption policies revisited – Global Trends and European Responses to the Challenge of Corruption |
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Transparency International
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Headquarters: SpeakUp! – developed a WordPress template along with customisation and deploying guidelines for globaleaks.org powered partnership portals (speakup.gov2.ro / whistleblowing.it /spregovori.si) ★ IACC Monitor – evaluates the progress of more than 300 anti-corruption commitments made by 19 countries and 10 international organisations during the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) |
Ireland: whistleblowingmonitor.eu · TOR - tracker for how EU countries are putting whistleblower protection laws into practice – with Network of European Integrity and Whistleblowing Authorities (NEIWA) Serbia: Helped TI Serbia develop a data visualization dashboard on campaign finance expenditures during the 2022 elections, including trainings on data visualisations basics and platforms (Tableau, Infogram) see: 1, 2 |
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Romanian Academic Society (SAR)
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Arguably the longest-standing think tank still active in Romania, throughout the years it
has
operated as a public policy research institute, a leading force in the promotion of good
governance, a consultant of the Romanian Government and other governments,
the United Nations, the World Bank, the
European Union.
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iastatullaintrebari.ro – MySociety/Alaveteli powered FOIA platform [Rails / Postgres / Postfix / Varnish] Publications – research publications database [WP] Integrity Pact – Civil control mechanism for safeguarding EU funds [WP] Valuemed – EuroQol/EQ-5D-3L estimator and dashboards for the Romanian National Authority for Quality Management in Health [Svelte] |
verificaintegritatea.ro – integrity profiles for political candidates. [Google Sheets to SQLite PHP API] Romanian Journal of Political Science [WP] Local public services - quantitative and qualitative monitoring of public services [Google Sheets → SQLite PHP API] |
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Romanian Center for European Policies (CRPE)
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One of the main Romanian think tanks specialised in European affairs. Since 2009 conducting
research
in the field of European and national public policies, implementing advocacy campaigns,
organising
public debates, training programmes and civic engagement campaigns for citizens
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EAP Fakes – repository of fake news / disinformation themes spread during the COVID-19 pandemic in the six countries of the Eastern Partnership [WP] |
YouthVote2019 - round based debate platform for distributed teams. Increasing voter turnout before the EU elections of May 2019 through interactive debates, information and quiz competitions. [WP] |
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Other / older projects
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Transparency Index (Funky Citizens) – measures the degree to which municipalities comply with their legal obligations regarding transparency [Google Sheets API] Singleron / Proteona - precision medicine start-up misc website sections / widgets (1, 2) SILNE - research networks concerned with the implementation of smoking prevention strategies EQUIPT – European-study on Quantifying Utility of Investment in Protection from Tobacco |
Veloteca - bicycle shop [WP, Magento] cigen.com.au [SquareSpace] Archdiocese of Bucharest [Drupal] MDS legal law firm Schubz - Romanian chapter of an experiential education center. See also AQI dashboard, Pety – following a GPS tracker strapped on a PET along the Danube river. heatgenius.co.uk – early (2014) smart heating thermostat |
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OSS / playground
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pax/uat-atlas – Uses Gmaps Places Aggregate Insights API to create city profiles and comparisons (WIP) gov2-ro/tempo-ins-dump – Alternative interface to the Romanian national statistics institute (WIP) pax/midas 🔐 – auto-mcp scraping recipes for online shops. An exercise in prompt engineering, to see how can a LLM generate scraping recipes, mostly unattended pax/fb-fomo-gobbler 🔐 Fetches event urls from Fb event destinations and pages, then scrapes event details. gov2-ro/prometeu – Git scraping for various public data feeds. expert-forum/party-affiliation-checker 🔐 – uses DuckDuckGo seach API and a cheap LLM (via llm.datasette.io) to guess if a person is a member of a political party. |
beercraft.ro – Romanian craft beer database digerati.ro – Romanian clone of usesthis.com pax/covid19ro-linkdump resources dashboard [Google Sheets → Static website] pax/ro-gender-assumer – name based gender guesser – used for monitoring the gender ratio of election candidates ING parser – Extracts structured values from ING Bank Home'Bank Transaction report CSV Wrangling – Tools & cli snippets for handling large csv files b01ng.club – reaction clips soundboard (arguably NSFW – featuring lifelike fart sounds) |
Even older work → pax.mioritics.ro/wrk
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Quality & Reliability Management (masters) |
Polytechnic University of Bucharest |
2002 – 2003 |
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Microelectronics |
Polytechnic University of Bucharest |
1997 – 2002 |
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Indonesian Language & Culture |
UGM, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Yogyakarta. |
2008 – 2009 |
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