A Romanian woman working as a researcher in the United States was recently nominated by President Barack Obama among the best 100 researchers in the country, and received financing for the next five years.

Those included in the top 100 were picked by nine departments and federal agencies, based on their results in engineering and computer research.

Rada Flavia Mihalcea graduated the Technical University in Cluj-Napoca in 1997, and then left for the U.S. to continue studies, according to her father, Dumitru Mihalcea.

She became an associate professor at the University of Fort Worth in Dallas. Mihalcea will get the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for her work in research related to natural language processing.

“I am more than honored by this award,” she said. “Thinking back on where I started from, I now believe everything is possible."