The Scientific Secretary-General of BAS, Prof. Evdokia Pasheva, participated in a virtual meeting of the General Assembly of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) on 3 June. Two new academies were accepted as members of ALLEA: the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts and the German Junge Akademie (Youth Academy). The meeting also elected new members of the Board of ALLEA for the period 2020-2022. The Board consists of 10 representatives of academies from Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The activities of the organization during the last 12 months and the steps for implementation of the strategic goals of ALLEA were discussed. The ALLEA activities report for 2019-2020 can be found [...]

The President of BAS Prof. Julian Revalski, Full Member of the Academy, participated in a virtual meeting of the European Academies' Science Advisory Council (EASAC) which took place on 29 May. The meeting discussed the activities of the organization over the past six months as well as some of the new documents of EASAC: the report "Packaging plastics in the circular economy" https://www.bas.bg/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/EASAC-Plastics-complete-Web-PDF.pdf, the commentary on the EU's environmental recovery after COVID-19 https://www.bas.bg/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/EASAC_Covid19Recovery_Web_26_May.pdf and others. One of the main topics of the meeting was related to the activities undertaken by the member academies in response to the coronavirus. Prof. Revalski presented the active work of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in nine points, emphasizing that the Academy reflected on its website also the news from [...]

On the occasion of the exhibition of the Russian Cultural Center in Sofia on the eve of the holiday of Bulgarian education and culture, presenting the brothers St. Cyril and St. Methodius as "reformers of the Slavic alphabet", "creators of the Church Slavonic language" and "first propagators of literacy and education in Russia”, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences expresses its bewilderment at the replacement of the historical and linguistic facts which are alphabetically known to all unprejudiced Slavic studies in the world, including Russian. It is sufficient to mention the name and work of the world-famous Russian scholar Academician Dmitry Likhachev who defines Bulgaria as the "cradle of Slavic culture", as the country that gave "the Eastern Slavs the highest layer of language." The world-famous [...]

Additional funds for the National Scientific Program “Petar Beron. Science and Innovation with Europe” were voted by the Council of Ministers at today's meeting, announced at a briefing the Minister of Education and Science Krassimir Valchev. The briefing was also attended by the Deputy Minister of Education and Science Karina Angelieva, the President of BAS Prof. Julian Revalski, full member of the Academy, and the Rector of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” Prof. Anastas Gerdjikov. The program is designed for Bulgarian scientists who return to the country to continue their scientific research and continues for the third consecutive year, the minister added. The planned funding this year is 1 million and 300 thousand levs but the amount may increase to 1 million and 900 thousand [...]

BGN 2 400 000 will be provided by the government for the Science Fund (BSF) which will be used for a thematic competition for developments in the field of COVID-19. This was announced at a briefing at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences by Deputy Minister of Education and Science Karina Angelieva. There are new challenges in science and scientists from different countries cannot cope alone, so we must provide an opportunity to work in interdisciplinary teams, to have access to published data and results, Deputy Minister Angelieva added. The Director of the Bulgarian Science Fund, Prof. Georgi Vaysilov, announced that the forthcoming competition will cover two thematic areas: for medical-biological and socio-economic sciences. In the first area, projects related to the fight against the virus will be [...]