Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (UBB) has launched Romania’s first national ecosystem dedicated to mental health, bringing together three initiatives: the Centre of Excellence in Neuroscience and Mental Health, the National Consortium of Excellence in Mental Health and the RoMIND study, a major longitudinal research programme focusing on adolescents and young people in Romania.
The launch event took place on 7 November 2026 at the UBBMed Amphitheatre, bringing together the centres’ and consortium’s coordinators, project partners, members of the academic and scientific communities, and media representatives.
Through this initiative, UBBMed and its partners aim to establish a national research infrastructure that brings together expertise from different disciplines to improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying mental health and contribute to better prevention and treatment in the long term.
The UBBMentalHealth Centre is coordinated by UBB Rector Professor Daniel David and Professor Andrei Miu of UBB’s Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. It is based within the university’s academic units and forms an integral part of the UBBMed platform.
UBBMentalHealth also coordinates the National Consortium of Excellence in Mental Health (RoMentalHealth), established by UBBMed and bringing together research teams from nine Romanian institutions:
- Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, the coordinating institution, through the UBBMentalHealth Centre;
- Transylvanian Institute of Neurosciences;
- Technical University of Cluj-Napoca;
- West University of Timișoara;
- “Costin D. Nenițescu” Institute of Organic and Supramolecular Chemistry of the Romanian Academy;
- “Prof. Dr. Alexandru Obregia” Clinical Hospital of Psychiatry in Bucharest;
- “Constantin Rădulescu-Motru” Institute of Philosophy and Psychology of the Romanian Academy;
- “Grigore T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iași;
- “Socola” Institute of Psychiatry in Iași.
The consortium is supported by an international scientific advisory committee comprising experts from Harvard University, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Columbia University, the University of Milano-Bicocca and Radboud University Medical Center.
Its interdisciplinary expertise spans psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, medicine, genetics, bioinformatics, computational science, chemistry, metabolomics and research ethics. The aim is to better understand the biological, psychological and sociocultural mechanisms that influence mental health.
RoMIND: a major study of mental health across generations
The consortium’s first research programme, RoMIND (Romanian Multimodal Investigation of Neurocognitive and Mental Health Development), will examine mental health over time, focusing primarily on adolescents and young adults, with an exploratory component involving older people.
The study aims to become Romania’s largest longitudinal and multimodal research project dedicated to the mental health of young people. It places particular emphasis on prevention and the early identification of risk factors, alongside understanding the factors that protect mental health.
The research will involve several thousand adolescents and young adults across four Romanian university centres: Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Timișoara and Iași. Participants will undergo three assessments at one-year intervals, allowing researchers to track how genetic and environmental factors interact with brain development, cognitive processes and biological mechanisms to influence mental health.
The study will also include specific clinical populations and an exploratory group of older people.
Participant recruitment is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 and continue until 2029. The programme will also include experimental studies using animal models to investigate biological mechanisms involved in gene-environment interactions, as well as the development of a biobank to preserve biological samples for future research.
