Preslav Nakov (2003)

The first winner of John Atanasov Presidential Award for achievements in the development of information society is Preslav Ivanov Nakov. He was born on 26 January 1977 in Veliko Turnovo. At the time when he received the award, he was a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in artificial Intelligence. He worked on the research project Bio Text – aiming to develop new methods and tools to facilitate the search and synthesis of textual information that address the needs of researchers in the field of medicine and biological sciences. He graduated from Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski " with a B.A. degree in informatics. In 1996 he graduated in mathematics school "Vasil Drumev" in Veliko Turnovo with National Diploma for achievements in the field of natural sciences. He has received numerous awards from student contests and competitions in programming and Informatics. In the period between 1999 - 2002 he was a lecturer and professor at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski "and in 1998-1999 - Assistant Professor of Algebra in University College London. He has authored 6 books, numerous scientific publications, technical and popular articles.