Dr. Plamen VATCHKOV

Chairman of the State Agency for Information Technology and Communications, Republic of Bulgaria

Dr. Vatchkov obtained a M.Sc. in Industrial Electronics and PhD in Technical Sciences at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute at 1977. He is Associate Professor in Technical Sciences at the Higher Commission for Attestation. Dr. Vatchkov has specialisations in Microprocessor Devices, Management and Quality Management.

Dr. Vatchkov started his career in 1973 as engineer at the Central Computing Institute in Sofia. He has gained his wide professional experience both in the public and private ICT sector. His professional and personal qualities have allowed him to hold a number of highly responsible positions, like Assistant Professor at the Technical University in Moscow; Deputy Director of the Institute for Technical Cybernetics and Robotics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; General Director of Micro Processing Systems; Managing Director of Bulvar Electronics, Ltd; Director of Information Technology, Overgas Holding; Deputy Director Operations of Cabletel.

From 1985 until 1992 Dr. Vatchkov was a member of the Scientific Council of the Institute for Technical Cybernetics and Robotics. Now he is a member of the Academic Council of the International University and a member of the Balkan Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Vatchkov is a member of the Federation of the Scientific and Technical Unions in Bulgaria and the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria.

Mr. Fabio COLASANTI
Director-General
DG Information Society and Media, European Commission

European Commission Director General for “Information Society” since July 2002, Fabio Colasanti, born in 1946, of Italian nationality, was previously Director General of the European Commission’s “Enterprise” Directorate General from January 2000 to June 2002.

Prior to this appointment, from June 1999 to the end of 1999, he was Deputy Head of the Office of Commission President Romano Prodi and from the beginning of 1996 until June 1999 a Director in the European Commission’s “Budget” Directorate General, with responsibility for the “Resources” Directorate.

Previously, from 1988 to the end of 1995, he served successively as Head of the “Economic Forecasts” and “Macro-economic policy analysis” units of the Commission’s Directorate General for “Economic and Financial Affairs”. Meanwhile, he studied local development issues in the USA during a three month trip across 18 states, thanks to an Eisenhower Fellowship in 1992.

Before returning to the Directorate General “Economic and Financial Affairs”, he was a member of the Commission’s Spokesman’s Group with responsibility for economic and monetary affairs, regional policy, credit and investment, small and medium-sized enterprises (the portfolios of Commissioners Aloïs Pfeiffer and Abel Matutes), from 1985 to the end of 1987.

From October 1977 to 1984, he worked as an economist in the Commission’s Directorate General for “Economic and Financial Affairs” (budgetary policies, Italian economy, short-term forecasts, European Monetary System and the Ecu).

From 1971 to 1977, he held various positions with Italcable Spa of Rome (an international telecommunications company which is now part of Telecom Italia).

Fabio Colasanti holds diplomas in economics from the University of Rome and the College of Europe in Bruges. He works regularly in English and French and is fluent in German and Spanish.

Gergana GRANCHAROVA
Minister of European Affairs, Republic of Bulgaria


Previously Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Member of Parliament, Ms. Grancharova has been recently appointed Minister of European Affairs. In addition to her experience as a Member of the Parliamentarian Group of the National Movement Simeon II, she has been on numerous Committees (the National Committee on Foreign Policy, Defense and Security; the National Committee on European Integration; the Joint Parliamentary Committee Bulgaria-EU; the US - Bulgarian Action Committee) and has chaired others (the US-Bulgaria Relations Parliamentary Committee; the Pan-European Union, Bulgaria). She has also been a Vice-President of the International Pan-European Union.

Prior to pursuing a political career, Ms. Grancharova gained experience as a legal consultant or assistant with a number of companies. Her solid background in law includes a postgraduate traineeship at the Sofia Civil Court and a traineeship for Young Parliamentarians in Brussels; she is a holder of a MA degree in law from Sofia University, followed by a PhD on the subject of European Union Enlargement, with an additional specialization in European Union Law at Asser College of Europe, Hague, the Netherlands.

She is proficient in both English and Russian.

Ekaterina VITKOVA
Deputy Minister of Education and Science


Born in 1964, Ms. Vitkova is of Bulgarian nationality. From 2001 to 2005 she worked as a Head of the Public Relations Department at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and then as a Head of the Cabinet of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy.

Ms. Vitkova holds a degree in Bulgarian and Czech philology from Sofia University, followed by a specialization in the Czech language at the Karlova University in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2001 she graduated from a course in Government Relations in the USA. In the summer of 2003 Ms. Vitkova received training at the Department of enterprise, trade and employment of the Republic of Ireland. Afterwards she specialized in Public Communication in the Netherlands.

Alongside her career in politics, Ms. Vitkova has been regularly contributing to Labour Daily.

She is proficient in both Czech and English.

Dr. Stephan PASCALL
Advisor, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, Directorate G

Stephan Pascall is a manager with extensive engineering and policy background and over 30 years’ experience with the telecommunications and space industry and the European Commission in a number of fields including telecommunications and its applications in space communications, Advanced mobile services, Trust and confidence services, Learning and culture, Regional development, environment and transport. He has specific experience in telecommunications and space in policy, regulation and technology aspects. Further experience in the development and management of all aspects of Community technology and implementation programmes.

Stephan Pascall has an extensive understanding of political and technological developments and status of the Central and Eastern European Countries. He plays an active role in sensitive high level international negotiations both with the EU member states and with the various public and industrial organisations. Extensive financial and management experience in leading skilled professional teams in achieving complex and challenging objectives with concrete results.

Stephan Pascall is a recognised authority in Space Communications and an author of a number of books and publications in subject.

Presentation:
 ICT Conference Lisbon Strategy, FP7, ICT Theme, Sofia 0704.ppt
 ICT Conference Lisbon Strategy, FP7, Challenge 3 Systems and Components, Sofia 0704.ppt

Morten O. MØLLER
Head of Unit, European Commission, DG Information Society and Media, IST Operations

His main responsibility is the information and organisation of the calls, evaluations of proposals, procedures for negotiation and implementation of projects. It also includes the organisation of the work with the Member States representatives in the Management Committee and the co-operation with the National Contact Points on the information on the IST research in the EU RTD Framework Programmes. He is also involved in the Commission's taskforces and working groups on the organisation of the research Framework programmes.

He has a long experience in management of research activities in the Commission's programmes, IST and Telematics in the field of learning technologies. Before he joined the Commission he was the director of a Danish Open University, and a university researcher and lecturer.

Presentation:
 Bulgaria-participation.ppt
 Bulgaria-IPR-CA.ppt
 Bulgaria-reporting-financing.ppt
 Challenge4_Bulgaria.ppt
 Bulgaria-Challenge 5.ppt

Michael ARENTOFT
Deputy Head of Unit for “Strategy for ICT R&D”, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission

Mr. Arentoft was previously heading the sector responsible for “IST Work Programme and Planning”. From ’99 till ’02 Michael headed the operational sector and coordinated scientific and technological relations for the Directorate “Essential Technologies and Infrastructures of the IST Programme”. He joined the European Commission in ’93 as a Project Officer in the area of “High Performance Computing and Networking”.

Michael has an educational background from the Electrical Engineering Master’s program of the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and from the Computer and Information Science PhD program of the University of Pennsylvania, Ivy League Engineering School in Philadelphia. His industrial background is as a Project Manager of the Space Division of Computer Resources International in Copenhagen and as a Director of a subsidiary of Rovsing International in Toulouse.

Presentation:
 Sofia-ICT-WP-2007-08-Calls2and3.ppt
 Sofia-RSFF.ppt
 Sofia-ETPs.ppt
 Sofia-ICT-Security.ppt
 Sofia-Challenge2.ppt

Dr Sylvia ILIEVA
Assoc. Prof., Department of Information Technologies, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Sofia “St. Kl. Ohridski”, Bulgaria

Sylvia Ilieva is M.Sc. in electronics at the Technical University-Sofia and Ph.D. in Computer Science at Technical University-Sofia. Currently she is an Associate Professor at Sofia University and Head of master program “Software Engineering”; also part time senior researcher at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Ilieva delivers lectures in: Software engineering, Distributed systems (Middleware), Component Based Software Engineering, Advanced Software Engineering, Agile methodologies. Dr. Ilieva has more than twenty publications in international conferences and journals. Her research interests comprise software engineering, e-business software development, communication networks. She was a member of the Program Committee of the several conferences - eBusiness and eWork Conference 2002, International Conference Pioneers of Bulgarian Mathematics, 2006, Component-based Software Engineering track on the 33rd EUROMICRO Conference, 2007, International Conference BCI'2007 - the 3-rd Balkan Conference in Informatics, 2007. She is a Member of the Organizing Committee of the 4th International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems (ICCBSS 2005) and a chair of sessions at many international conferences.

She has a good record of successful participation in a number of European RTD Projects, such as: ACTS projects W4ATT, NICE; INCO projects MONHX, IDEALIST-EAST; 5FP projects IDEALIST-5FP, ECUA+, eXPERT, Diogen; 6FP projects IDEALIST-34, Kaleidoscope, TENcompetence, and IDEALIST-7FP. She has also participated in a number of national RTD projects and World Bank projects.

Sylvia Ilieva was an evaluator for research project proposals in Call 2 of IST/FP6 for the strategic objective “Open Development Platforms for Software and Services”, and in Call 5 of IST/FP6 for Strategic objective “Software and Services”. She is a member of the European technology platform NESSI.

Presentation:
 Idealist-7FP-26_04_2007-Sofia.pdf
 Sylvia-evaluators-view-2007.pdf

Dr. Daniel BRATANOV
Senior Researcher associate, Automation and Robotics Laboratory, University of Rousse, Bulgaria

Born in 1969 with Bulgarian nationality, Dr. Bratanov graduated as M.Sc. in Manufacturing Engineering (1995) and PhD in Manufacturing Automation (2006) at the "Angel Kanchev" University of Rousse. Since his graduation in 1995 he is a Senior Researcher in the Automation and Robotics laboratory of the Faculty of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in University of Rousse.

He has participated as a researcher in 5 EU funded projects in FP5, a team leader in 1 EU funded project in FP5 and a scientific coordinator in 1 EU funded FP6 project.

Dr. Bratanov main skills are in Robotics & Automation; Rapid tooling & Rapid Prototyping; and also in Information & Communication Technologies & Emergency Risk Management.

Presentation:
 A success story.pdf

Zlatina MARINOVA
Sirma AI Bulgaria

Mrs. Zlatina Marinova studied Computer Science at the Sofia University, Bulgaria, and has specialized Artificial Intelligence. Her research interests are in planning, multi-agent systems (MAS), semantic Web, semantic Web services (SWS) and semantic repositories.

Marinova joined Sirma http://www.sirma.com in 1994 and the Ontotext Lab. in 2003. She has participated in a number of EC research projects, among which are:

- Semantic Web-enabled Web Services (SWWS), http://swws.semanticweb.org/,
- Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services - the DIP Project, http://dip.semanticweb.org/
- INFRAWEBS project, http://www.infrawebs.eu/, in which Marinova was involved as a project manager for Ontotext.
- Transitioning Applications to Ontologies (TAO), http://www.tao-project.eu/.

Presentation:
 The Secrets of Winning Proposal.pdf

Marieta POPOVA
Director of the Regional Centre for Information Society Development, Bulgaria, FP7/ICT National Contact Point

Ms. Marieta Popova is M.Sc. in radio electronics at the Technical University - Sofia and M. Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Programming at the same University.

She has extensive experience as a coordinator in different projects - the Y2K regional coordination in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia - a World Bank project, the Business Support Programme, the e-Procurement Register in Bulgaria, Integrated and Electronic Services for the Public Administration - PHARE projects, etc. She has a good record of successful participation in European RTD projects, such as the FP5 ISIS project, and FP6 projects SEE Innovation and Inno SMEs.

Ms. Popova has been acting as an expert to the ISTC in FP6. Her current activities are related to fostering the participation of SMEs in RTD programmes and networking between SMEs, academia and scientific and research organizations, the public and local administrations and the non-governmental organizations in all areas connected to the development, introduction and wide use of information society technologies (IST). Ms Popova is a National Contact Point for the ICT Theme in FP7.

Presentation:
 The NCP Network.pdf

Kamen SPASOV
Coordinator with the IT Coordination Centre under the Council of Ministers
Head of the National Innovation Centre for ICT under the State Agency for Information Technology


Prior to these appointments, he was involved in teaching and research at two Bulgarian universities - the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy Sofia and Sofia University. His activities were directly related to the building of Bulgarian e-government and comprised publications, training for the state administration, and presentations delivered to high-level (CIO) civil servants in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Ireland, and Korea.

In addition, Kamen Spasov took part in an Identity Management Project funded under the EU 6th Framework Programme. He has also a broad business experience, including sales and marketing, gained in the USA and Bulgaria, in companies such as IBM, IDG, CMP, etc.

Kamen Spasov holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a MBA in International Business.

Presentation:
 HAGRID and similar SSAs with BG participation.pdf