Bulgarian student achieves historic success in artificial intelligence

Georgi Pashaliyev, a student from the Sofia High School of Mathematics "Paisii Hilendarski", achieved historic success for Bulgaria in the field of artificial intelligence, the press office of the Ministry of Education and Science reported.

Last summer, the young man, who this year is in 12th grade, was an intern at one of the best universities in the world - ETH in Zurich. There he worked under the guidance of Dr. Nikola Konstantinov, who since this year has been a researcher at the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" - INSAIT, as well as with prof. Martin Vechev and Florian Dorner, PhD student at the Max Planck Institute. The topic of the internship is the development of new data sharing algorithms to create more reliable artificial intelligence. Thanks to the strategic partnership between the Swiss university and the Bulgarian institute INSAIT, Georgi is continuing his work in Sofia this summer.

A few days ago came the first big news related to the young man. After hard work that began in the summer of 2022, the student ‘s name is among the authors of NeurIPS, the most renowned scientific conference on artificial intelligence in the world and in the top 10 among all fields of science. Thus, for the first time in history, a Bulgarian student is participating with a publication in a forum of such rank in this field.

In order to give more Bulgarian children the same unique opportunity as Georgi, and here in Bulgaria, INSAIT is developing its own programme that gives the best Bulgarian students the opportunity to participate in world-class research in Sofia. The programme is called STARS, short for Science, Technology and AI Research Internship for High-School Students. The programme is unique because for 8 - 10 weeks students not only work together with renowned scientists on some of the most current topics in artificial intelligence, but also actively participate in all discussions at the institute.

The programme started this summer in Sofia and three other youngsters are working together with Georgi, each of them showing great potential for development. Among them are Maria Drencheva from the Sofia High School,of Mathematics, Reni Paskaleva from the First Private High School of Mathematics and Teodora Todorova from the Mathematics High School in Bourgas. In 2024, the scientific organization plans to open ten new places for applications.

In addition to STARS, there are other established programmes for students and talent development in Bulgaria, such as the High School Student Institute of Mathematics and Informatics and the Summer Research School at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI-BAS).

The INSAIT Institute at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" has the strategic goal to turn Bulgaria into a leading centre for research and innovation in the field of informatics and artificial intelligence. Just a month ago the institute became part of ELLIS - the leading European initiative for artificial intelligence. With this, Bulgaria became the first country in Eastern Europe to join the network, which includes Oxford, Cambridge, Max Planck and others.

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