Six More of Bulgaria’s Brightest Young Mathematicians Accepted at INSAIT’s EXPLORER Program
On September 10, 2025, at the Granite Hall of the Council of Ministers, the new scholarship recipients of the four-year EXPLORER (EXcellence Program in technoLOgy and REseaRch) Program of the Institute for Computer Science, AI and Technology (INSAIT) at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and its Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics were officially presented.
Six of the most talented young Bulgarians, graduates of the country’s leading mathematics high schools, received the opportunity to pursue world-class education and internships in informatics, mathematics, and artificial intelligence. They chose to remain in Bulgaria and build their future here, rather than depart for prestigious universities in Europe and the United States.
The event was attended by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria, Mr. Rosen Zhelyazkov; the Minister of Education and Science, Mr. Krassimir Valchev; the Rector of Sofia University, Prof. Georgi Valchev; the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Prof. Maya Stoyanova; Prof. Martin Vechev, Founder and Scientific Director of INSAIT, INSAIT’s Executive Director, Eng. Borislav Petrov; and other distinguished guests.
Among the awarded scholars are Nikolay Drenchev from the Sofia High School of Mathematics, gold medalist at the World Mathematics Team Competition in Qatar and at Mathematics Without Borders; Vanesa Kalinkova from the High School of Mathematics and Science “Acad. Nikola Obreshkov” in Burgas, gold medalist at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Taipei with the highest score among 227 participants, as well as medalist at the Zhautykov Olympiad and the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence; Aleksandar Georgiev from the High School of Mathematics “Dr. Petar Beron” in Varna, winner of the National STEM Competition and two-time champion of the National Olympiad in Informatics; Aleksandar Kodzhabashiyski from the Sofia High School of Mathematics, distinguished at the National Spring Physics Competition and medalist in multiple national tournaments in informatics; Elena Dimitrova, gold medalist at the Malaysia International Mathematical Olympiad and winner of national and international awards for innovative AI and robotics projects; and Petar Mihov from the Sofia High School of Mathematics “Paisii Hilendarski”, silver medalist at the prestigious International “John Atanasoff” Informatics Tournament and the European Junior Olympiad in Informatics, and two-time laureate of the National Olympiad in Informatics.
The EXPLORER Program is designed to retain Bulgaria’s brightest talents by enabling them to focus on their education and research in cutting-edge fields such as large language models, computer vision, robotics, and machine learning. It combines undergraduate studies at Sofia University’s Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics with research at INSAIT and engineering internships at leading technology companies.
The scholarships for the 2025 cohort were made possible thanks to the support of the Za primer Foundation, established by the Bulgarian IT company SiteGround; the 200-year-old British company MAN Group; the venture capital fund LaunchHub; the Bulgarian product company Ampeco, developer of a cloud-based EV charging management platform; and the high-tech software company Alcatraz AI.