 In 1969 he left Ceauşescu’s Romania and settled in Sweden, where he obtained the Swedish MD and worked as a family physician in Gagnef village.He continued to pursue and personally fund his research in the field of smut fungus taxonomy and obtained his PhD in taxonomic botany at Uppsala University in 1985 (under supervision of Prof. Jan Axel Nannfeldt).His doctoral thesis, "Carpathian Ustilaginales", was published in the academic journal "Symbolae Botanicae Upsalienses".