Geniuses in quantum physics and informatics won 2020 “John Atansoff” Award

Bulgarian geniuses in quantum physics and informatics are this year's winners of John Atanasoff Award of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria, organized for the 18th consecutive year. The big winner of this year's award is PhD in Applied Physics, Zlatko Mine, at Yaphle University, and the runner-up is PhD Information Technology from Munich, Nikola Chipev.

Zlatko Minev, a 30-year-old PhD in applied physics, is resolving a 100-year-old dispute between the fathers of quantum physics, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr: Are quantum leaps accidental?

I proved that the jump can be traced, caught and turned before it has a detrimental effect, says Dr. Zlatko Minev.

His experiment changed the foundations of physics and revolutionized the use of quantum computers.

I proposed and did an experiment that was considered impossible in the foreseeable future, he explains.

His runner-up, 29-year-old Nikolai Chipev, set a world record for billions of computer operations per second in the field of molecular dynamics.

Nikola Chipev, Ph.D., Technical University, Munich: On two of the three largest supercomputers in Germany, we performed calculations on over 7,000 servers, 670 terabytes of RAM and performed the world's first simulation of over 20 trillion particles with a performance of over 1 petaflop in a second. That makes a quadrillion operation.

A petaflop is one million billion computer operations per second. That is, a unit with fifteen zeros after it.

In the category "Inspirer and creator of talents" the award was given to Acad. Kiril Boyanov from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

"I thank all of you, the participants in the competition, for the fact that no matter where you are, you do not break the living connection with Bulgaria," President Rumen Radev told the young scientists.

Awards for debut and projects with public contribution were received by students and teachers of mathematics and computer science from the country - the new IT geniuses of Bulgaria.