Dr. Penelopia Iancu is doing research on the following topics: children and youth mental health, family intervention, interprofessional collaboration and integrated service delivery, complex problem-solving using creativity, ethical issues of documentation and social work education. She focuses on qualitative and mixed research and interdisciplinarity. She is Vice-president of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Children and Youth Mental Health, from Université de Moncton, Canada.

Researchers' interest for complex problem solving has increased because of observations showing that real-life problems are often complex, ill-defined and non-linear; problem-solving skills used to solve well-defined problems are not always transferable to complex problems; traditional strategies are less efficient when applied to complex problem solving (Funke, 2010; Jonassen, 2003). These problems are characterized by structural complexity, non-linear and unpredicatable dynamics and non-transparency (Funke, 2010; Quesada, Kintsch & Gomez, 2005). Implications for education include, among other things, changing the ways educators prepare students to solve complex problems and providing more opportunities for students to solve these problems collaboratively in interdisciplinary settings.