site.btaUPDATED Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to Take Part in 14th Sofia Science Festival

The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) will participate in the fourteenth edition of the Sofia Science Festival, the institution said.

More than 120 scientists from 11 countries, including Bulgaria, will take part in the forum, which will be held May 9-12 at Sofia Tech Park. 

BAS scientists will take part in scientific lectures, presentations, demonstrations and workshops.

In her lecture ''The Wonderful World of Plants'' Prof. Dr. Svetlana Nikolova - Director of the Botanical Garden of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Diana Venkova - Specialist in International Exchange - Index Seminum, and Public Relations, will present plant species that are distinguished by their biology and application. 

Prof. Dr. Ivan Drenovski from the Institute for Climate, Atmosphere and Water Research (ICAW) will talk about the winds in Bulgaria - their specificity and climate effect. 

Immunologist Assoc. Prof. Dr. Petya Dimitrova from the Institute of Microbiology will explain why it is so difficult to regulate the immune response in respiratory viral infections and why it is necessary not to indiscriminately and thoughtlessly employ various approaches that suppress chronic inflammation but do not "work" well in acute infections. She will answer these questions in her lecture ''The Immune Response to Viral Infections''. 

In her lecture "Climate change in the geological history of the Earth - the last 66 million years", Prof. Dr. Kristalina Stoykova - Deputy Director of the Geological Institute, together with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zlatka Milakovska, will present the key to understanding modern changes.

Dr. Violeta Zhelyazkova of the National Museum of Natural History will present the world's first study linking the physiological features of a group of mammals to specific properties of their antibodies. The study has significant potential to serve in the development of targeted antibody therapies applicable to humans. 

Assoc. Todor Chobanov from the Institute of Balkan Studies with a centre on Thracology will give a lecture on the origin of the Bulgarian people. 

In the lecture "The Little Big Dinosaur'' the paleontologists Vladimir Nikolov - National Museum of Natural History, and Assoc. Docho Dochev, in collaboration with renowned expert on dinosaurs - prof. Steve Brusatte, are looking for an answer to the question of whether the fossils, discovered in 1985 in the Labyrinth Cave, of a hadrosauroid - a dinosaur with a duck bill, are of a young dinosaur or an adult individual of small size, similar to the dwarf dinosaurs that lived at the same time on the territory of Romania.

In the workshop "Minerals and Fossils for Little Explorers", visitors will be able to get in touch with the team of scientists from the Geological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Milena Vetseva, Hristiana Georgieva, Tsvetomila Vladinova, Martin Dimitrov and Radoslav Kalchev. They will answer questions including: what are minerals; what are fossils; how and in what form do we find remains of animals and plants that lived millions of years ago; where and how to find minerals or fossils in nature; how can we determine what was the climate on Earth a long time ago, and more.

The project Competence Centre Hitmobil - Technologies and Systems for Clean Energy Generation, Storage and Consumption will be presented in the workshop on "Electrochemistry for Green Energy". The workshop aims to spark people's interest in learning about electrochemical systems for storing and distributing electricity and their application in green energy technologies.

At the stand of the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of BAS, a lecture on "Science and Art Refracted through the Prism of Glass" will be given by Dr. Anastasia Andreeva from the University of Veliko Tarnovo and Dr. Lyubomir Alexandrov from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of BAS.

Among the participants from the Bulgarian scientific community, besides representatives of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, there are also those from Sofia University, the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy; the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NIMH); from the University of Plovdiv; the Medical University in Sofia, among others, the BAS press centre said.