The Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences ( IMI - BAS ) is a leading Bulgarian centre in mathematical and information sciences and technologies, having conducted an efficient, long-range, consistent policy in these fields since its establishment in 1947. The Institute plays the role of a coordinator and a catalyst of research in the country. More than 400 people of Bulgarian universities and research institutes take part in the annual report sessions held at IMI - BAS on its main research areas. The Institute has a total staff of 209 (153 researchers, among them 104 PhD and DSc, including 105 full and associate professors) in 11 departments. It has close connections with other research, academic and decisio n-making centres in Bulgaria (joint activities with practically all the national universities). The high calibre of IMI - BAS 's researchers assures a lasting collaboration (projects, educational programmes, scientific events, exchange of visits) with more than 60 universities and scientific research institutes from over 40 countries. Each year IMI - BAS welcomes over 1 00 renowned foreign scholars, organises more than 20 scientific conferences, seminars and schools. The research staff of IMI - BAS produces about 400 original papers annually, some 200 of them in high-profile journals and proceedings of prestigious international conferences. Three scientific journals are published by IMI - BAS and four - with its cooperation. Many recent activities have focused on collaboration with industrial stakeholders.

The Institute has a serious experience in successful participation and coordination of projects, including FP6 and FP7 EC programs, LLP, CIP, regional and trans-border ones.

In the last 3 years more than 20 research projects have been carried out in the frames of the Bulgarian National Science Fund in harmony of the priorities of the National Research and Development Strategy.

The Institute was accredited by the National Evaluation and Accreditation Agency with the highest degree for supervising and educating PhD students in all scientific areas in mathematics, informatics and the methodology of mathematics and informatics.

IMI - BAS has a contemporary infrastructure in terms of 246 working places for researchers and administration, 10 seminar and computer classrooms, 4 apartments for visiting professors; 10 GB high speed local network (with 24 hours Internet access), 4 high performance servers, 120 working stations. Its library has more than 93 thousands of books and specialized journals thus being the richest library in the South Eastern Europe. IMI - BAS provides on-line access to the international scientific data bases SCOPUS and MathSciNet.

Department of Differential Equations and Mathematical Physics

The research group of Department of Differential Equations and Mathematical Physics, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics ( IMI ) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has been working for a long time in the theory of differential equations, more precisely in partial differential equations ( PDE ), ordinary differential equations (ODE), mathematical modeling of complex phenomena arising from applications in mathematical physics, in biology, in neuroscience, in ecology, in mechanics , Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs), etc.

The group of researchers at the Department of Differential Equations and Mathematical Physics working on mathematical models in Neuroscience involves: Borislav Yordanov, Rumyana Yordanova, Maya Markova, Victoria Rashkova.

Prof. Angela Slavova graduated at Technical University , Russe, M. Sc. in 1986. In the period 1992-1993 she got Fulbright Scholarship at Florida Institute of Technology, Florida , USA . She got her Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1994. In 2005 she became Doctor of Science and in 2007 Full Professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Prof. Slavova is a Head of the Department of Differential Equations and Mathematical Physics, Institute of Mathematics , Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She participated in more than 30 conferences, workshops and seminars as an invited speaker. She got in the period January-July 1998 - CNR Fellowship, University of Florence , Italy . She was visiting professor at the University of Ioannina, Greeece, University of Catania, Italy, University of Torino, Italy, Astronomical Observatory, Torino, Italy, College of Judea and Samaria, Ariel, Israel, University of Ferrara, Italy, University of Bologna, University of Florence, Italy, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, etc. Professor Slavova has more than 100 publications in prestigious journals in Applied Mathematics, IEEE Journals, etc. She is an author and co-author of 3 monographs. Prof. Slavova is a member of AMS , SIAM , Chair of Bulgarian Section of SIAM, Board of Bulgarian Section of WSEAS, EMS , IEEE Technical Committee on CNNAD.

Main research interests of Prof. Angela Slavova is in Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs), mathematical modeling, studying the dynamics of different models via CNNs approach. Some autonomous CNNs represent an excellent approximation of nonlinear partial differential equations ( PDE ). Although the CNNs equations describing reaction-diffusion systems are with the large number of cells, they can exhibit new phenomena that can not be obtained from their underlying PDE . This demonstrates that an autonomous CNNs is in some sense more general than its associated nonlinear PDE . Moreover, autonomous CNN can serve as a unifying paradigm for active wave propagation. For researchers outside of mathematics, the CNN paradigm will find increasing applications in view of the large and rapidly expanding body of knowledge being generated in the CNN research community. In the field of mathematical models in biomedicine her interests involve the derivation of CNN based feature extraction algorithms for the detection of a pre-seizure state in epilepsy.