Activities of HSSI include three events during the year: two competitive sessions and one Research Summer School.

   High School Students Conference in January. The authors of the best projects are invited:
– to take part in an Interview for selecting two Bulgarian participants in RSI;
– to participate in the School Section at the expenses of HSSI.

   Interview for selecting participants in RSI
   Before 2000 (the foundation of HSSI) the “St Cyril and St Methodius” International Foundation used to select two Bulgarian high school students to participate in RSI. One of the incentives to create HSSI was the necessity to select good Bulgarian students for RSI. Here are the names of all Bulgarian participants for the last 6 years:

2001: Kaloyan Slavov, Sofia and Eleonora Encheva, Veliko Turnovo
2002: Liudmil Antonov, Plovdiv and Iva Rashkova, Ruse
2003: Veselin Dimitrov, Sofia and Todor Kolev, Sofia
2004: Alexander Simeonov, Varna and Antoni Rangachev, Sofia
2005: Veselin Kulev, Varna and Vladislav Petkov, Sofia
2006: Vladimir Marinov, Sofia and Todor Bilarev, Sofia
   For more information about the Research Science Institute (RSI), visit their official website.


   High School Students Section in the framework of the annual Spring Conferences of UBM in April. The authors of the best projects are invited to participate in the Research Summer School at the expenses of HSSI.
   Both sessions are independent. Students may participate in either event. The authors present their work in front of a Jury and in the presence of the other participants, teachers, and parents. Based on the merits of the paper and the style of presentation, the Jury judges the works and selects the best ones. Their authors receive Certificates for Excellence; all other participants are given Diplomas for participation in the event, which is already a kind of recognition. All participants in the School Section, who graduate the secondary school in the current year, are given the opportunity to continue their education in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the Plovdiv University without sitting for university apply exams.

   Research Summer School takes place in three weeks in July–August in Bulgaria. During the first two weeks, lectures and practical courses in Mathematics and Informatics are given by eminent specialists from universities, academic institutions and software companies. Here are some of the topics of the lectures presented to students:
in Mathematics:

Geometry: duality, inversion, remarkable points in the triangle
Geometric extremum problems: Malfatti problems; inequalities in a triangle
Number theory: Diophantine equations
Dynamical systems and chaos
Functional equations
Extremum graph theory
Invariants
Games and strategies

in Informatics: Combinatorial algorithms
Mathematical games
Real life applications – problems and approaches
Programming in Internet: examples in Perl, JavaScript, PHP
Analysis, design and development of web sites
Programming languages: identification and complexity
Object-oriented programming
Introduction to coding theory
Nonlinear optimization and application to operation research
Abstract data types and data structures

The main goal of the training is to extend the students’ knowledge in topics related to their interests and to offer new problems to be studied and solved in further projects. The third week is devoted to a High School Students Workshop, where the participants report on their results and further studies. The presentations are in front of specialists whose role is to advise the students in finding the right topics and problems to be studied, to recommend methods and tools to be used to achieve high quality results.

   High School Teachers Workshop takes place during the third week of the Research Summer School. Participants are the research advisors of the students projects, presented at the events of HSSI during the school year. The teachers take part in the Students Workshop. Lectures in Mathematics and Informatics are also delivered to the teachers.

   Seminar on Extra-Curricular Work in Mathematics takes place once a month during the school year, in the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics. The aim of the Seminar is to bring together high school students, teachers and scientists to present and discuss problems of common interest.


©2005 HSSI, 19 April, 2006 17:42