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AI, 3D Mapping, and Big Data in Culture: the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics Hosts Museum Big Data 2026
From November 12 to 14, 2026, the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences will host researchers and professionals from the fields of digital cultural heritage, museum collections, data, artificial intelligence, and new technologies. The ERA Chair project FOCUS on digital cultural heritage at IMI-BAS, in collaboration with the Museology Research Laboratory at the Ionian University (Greece), is organizing the fourth international conference, Museum Big Data 2026.
The forum will feature over 50 research papers by authors from 32 countries and will be preceded by an Autumn School for PhD students and early-career researchers, titled “The Application of Artificial Intelligence in Libraries, Museums, Archives, and Galleries.” A highlight of the international conference is a masterclass on “3D Digitisation and 3D Mapping of Cultural Heritage,” which will take place on November 12, 2026, at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Another notable feature is an audiovisual 3D mapping projection on the facade of the historic Bulgarian Academy of Sciences building, scheduled for the evening of the same day.
The work carried out under the FOCUS project at IMI centers on integrating the principles of Open Science and Open Innovation into the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage. This underscores the leading role of IMI as the primary host and organizer of a forum dedicated to the 3D digitisation of cultural heritage – one of the fastest-growing and strategically significant areas within European policy on digital cultural content.
Modern galleries, libraries, archives, and museums store and process vast amounts of data – ranging from collection metadata and visitor analytics to knowledge graphs, digital twins, and artificial intelligence. These technological solutions are transforming how cultural heritage is documented, interpreted, managed, and presented to the public.
Today, there is an increasing need for methods to uncover new information, patterns, clusters, and interconnections within large volumes of museum data. This extensive work gives rise to ethical considerations that require a deep understanding of the context—both in the physical and digital realms – and necessitate the use of interdisciplinary methods, techniques, and testing procedures related to Big Data.
The MBD conferences, held since 2019, showcase innovative research and practical achievements in the field of museum Big Data. The primary objective of each edition of the forum is to foster high-quality research in this domain and to provide opportunities for professional networking within this emerging sector. The forum attracts academic researchers, practitioners, and technology specialists engaged in current research debates regarding emerging trends in the field, while also providing a platform for showcasing experimental developments.
Bulgaria possesses a remarkably diverse cultural and historical heritage in Europe, spanning more than seven millennia of human history. From prehistoric settlements and Thracian sanctuaries to Roman cities, medieval capitals, urban heritage from the Ottoman period, architectural monuments from the last century, and sites from the socialist era, the country serves as a unique crossroads of cultures, traditions, and historical layers.
The museum sector in Bulgaria comprises over 300 museums, galleries, archives, and cultural heritage sites – ranging from major national institutions to regional museums—as well as specialised collections in the fields of archaeology, history, ethnography, art, and natural heritage. Bulgaria is also home to 10 sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, encompassing both tangible heritage (such as the Old Town of Nessebar and the Rock-Hewn Churches of Ivanovo) and intangible heritage (such as traditional Bulgarian choral singing).
In recent years, institutions dedicated to cultural heritage in Bulgaria have increasingly turned toward digitalisation, digital preservation, and data-driven approaches—often in close collaboration with universities, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and European research infrastructures. At the same time, many of these institutions face challenges related to data interoperability, long-term sustainability, skills development, and integration into broader open science ecosystems.
The conference will feature research papers in the following key areas:
- Museum Big Data and Analytics
- Artificial Intelligence in Museums
- Digital Cultural Heritage, Metadata, and Interoperability
- Visitor Experience and Audience Research
- Immersive Technologies and Digital Twins
- Open Science, Data Governance, and Ethics
- Museum Innovation, Sustainability, and Practice
Scientific Conference “November Days of Mathematics and Informatics”
From November 1 to 3, 2026, the international scientific conference “November Days of Mathematics and Informatics” (NDMI 2026) will be held in Veliko Tarnovo. This prestigious scientific forum brings together researchers, university faculty, doctoral candidates, and young scholars to present contemporary achievements, new ideas, and applied developments in the fields of the exact sciences and technology.
The conference is organised by the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo, in collaboration with the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna, and the Union of Mathematicians in Bulgaria. The initiative aims to foster scientific collaboration, knowledge transfer, and interdisciplinary interaction among specialists from Bulgaria and abroad.
The thematic scope of the conference covers a wide range of fundamental and applied scientific areas, including mathematical analysis, geometry and its applications, discrete structures, computer science and modern information technologies, as well as the methodology of teaching mathematics and informatics. The scientific program features plenary lectures by distinguished experts, parallel thematic sessions, and discussion panels dedicated to the exchange of experience and best practices.
The full scientific program, participation requirements, and additional information regarding the event are available on the official NDMI 2026 website.
Major Recognition for Bulgarian Mathematics: Film Featuring ICMS–Sofia Premieres at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia
A short film dedicated to the International Center for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS–Sofia) at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI-BAS) was presented during the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia.
As part of the forum’s program, short video presentations selected and produced by the official television channel of the International Congress are continuously broadcast. ICM TV chose only 27 leading mathematical centers from around the world to be presented during the congress and commissioned special videos showcasing their activities. The fact that the International Center for Mathematical Sciences is a part of this elite selection – and the only one featured from Eastern Europe—is an exceptionally high recognition and testament to its work and rapid establishment on the global scientific stage.
The International Congress of Mathematicians is a forum with over a century of history and global reach and the most significant and prestigious event in the world of mathematics. Its history dates back to 1897 in Zurich, and it takes place every four years. It is during this congress that the highest honours in mathematics, including the Fields Medal, are awarded. One of this year’s awardees – John Pardon, is well known to the mathematical community in Bulgaria; he participated in the Inaugural conference of the International Center for Mathematical Sciences in Sofia in 2022.
This year’s edition of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia brought together over 3,000 in-person participants, while the online audience following the event far exceeded that number. Screening the ICMS film in front of such an impressive audience offers an outstanding opportunity for the center’s activities and achievements to reach a remarkably wide circle of scientists, researchers, and specialists from all parts of the globe.
One of the main messages conveyed to this audience is that despite its young age, ICMS–Sofia has turned Bulgaria into an attractive hub for the development of world-class mathematical research. The center has already established a firm standing on the scientific stage, not only regionally and within Europe, but also across the ocean. To date, it has attracted dozens of prominent world-known scientists to its activities, with 20 mathematicians fr
om all over the world at various stages of their careers working permanently in Sofia.
This marks a significant positive shift in the development of Bulgarian science: while in the past Bulgarian mathematicians and young scientists overwhelmingly sought career opportunities at prestigious scientific centers abroad, today we are witnessing the reverse process – established and promising young researchers from all over the world come to Sofia, attracted by the opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned experts and by the excellent conditions for developing their scientific potential.
The ICMS film presented in Philadelphia offers an inside look into both the vision of its leadership and the actual research atmosphere at the center. The video features distinguished scientists such as Prof. Julian Revalski, Director of ICMS and one of the visionaries who spearheaded the idea of its creation and navigated the challenging path toward its realization, Prof. Ludmil Katzarkov, Prof. Maxim Kontsevich, a Fields medalist and a member of the Advisory Board of ICMS, and Prof. Milen Yakimov.
The new generation of researchers at ICMS is represented by Leonardo Cavenaghi, Higinio Serrano, and Emine Yıldırım – members of the center’s three research groups, who share their personal experiences and the career growth opportunities that Bulgaria offers them.
The broadcast of the film will continue over the next year on the official YouTube channel of the congress.
You can watch the film here:
The 2026 Fields Medalists were announced at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Philadelphia
From July 23 to July 30, 2026, the International Congress of Mathematicians is taking place in Philadelphia. This is the largest congress in the mathematical community, organized once every four years under the auspices of the International Mathematical Union (IMU).
Traditionally, during the opening ceremony on the first day of the congress, the Fields Medal—the most prestigious award in mathematics—is presented. The Fields Medal is named after the Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields (1863–1932) and is awarded to mathematicians up to 40 years of age for outstanding achievements in the field of mathematics. The award was first presented in 1936, and since 1950 it has been awarded every four years.
Often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics”, the medal is awarded in recognition of outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and the promise of future achievement.
At this year’s International Congress, the four 2026 Fields Medal laureates were officially announced: Yu Deng (37), University of Chicago, USA; John Pardon (37), Stony Brook University, USA; Jacob Tsimerman (38), University of Toronto, Canada; and Hong Wang (35), New York University, USA, and IHÉS, France.
For the third time in the history of the award, one of the Fields Medal recipients is a woman. The first female winner of the award was Maryam Mirzakhani, professor of mathematics at Stanford University, California, USA, who was a laureate in 2014. In 2022, Maryna Viazovska was honored with the prestigious award.
Yu Deng is awarded the 2026 Fields Medal for his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrödinger dynamics.
John Pardon is awarded the 2026 Fields Medal for his achievements in symplectic geometry, including new approaches to virtual fundamental cycles, Fukaya categories of Liouville manifolds and counting holomorphic curves, and for his contributions to other areas of geometry and topology, including group actions on 3-manifolds and knot theory. John Pardon is well known to the mathematical community in Bulgaria; he has participated in two conferences of the International Center for Mathematical Sciences in Sofia.
Jacob Tsimerman is awarded the 2026 Fields Medal for his role in the vast extension of the scope of o-minimal techniques within arithmetic and complex algebraic geometry, including the proof of Griffiths’ conjecture on the algebraicity of images of the period maps.
Hong Wang is awarded the 2026 Fields Medal for her work in harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory, including applications of multiscale and decoupling techniques to the local smoothing conjecture for the planar wave equation, and major advances in Fourier restriction, Falconer distance sets, Furstenberg sets in the plane, and the Kakeya problem in three dimensions.
Shayan Oveis Gharan (40), University of Washington, USA, is awarded the 2026 IMU Abacus Medal for his landmark contributions to the theory of algorithms, taking the analysis of algorithms beyond combinatorics and probabilistic analysis into the theory of the geometry of polynomials and related topics. This theory has led to deeper understanding of distributions on spanning trees and matroid bases in general. Oveis Gharan’s work improved the approximation of the metric travelling salesperson problem, breaking the limit on the approximation factor in Christofides’ 3/2-algorithm from 50 years ago, and led to a revolution in the understanding of Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithms (proving the Mihail-Vazirani conjecture and giving a self-contained proof that resolved the strongest version of Mason’s conjecture) through spectral independence.
More about the prizes and the laureates can be found at https://www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/fields-medal/fields-medals-2026
FOCUS Opens a Part-Time Postdoctoral Position in AI-Supported Collaborative Research
The FOCUS ERA Chair at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI-BAS) has opened a call for a part-time Postdoctoral Researcher (Recognised Researcher, R2) to join its interdisciplinary research team working on Artificial Intelligence, Digital Cultural Heritage, Open Science, and Human – AI Collaboration.
The position is open to researchers currently employed at IMI-BAS and focuses on developing and validating an AI-supported collaborative research environment that enables effective cooperation between multidisciplinary research teams and intelligent AI agents. The successful candidate will coordinate the design of collaborative research workflows, integrate AI-assisted services into scientific processes, and evaluate the developed platform in real research settings.
Applicants should hold a PhD in Informatics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, or a related field. Experience in AI-supported collaborative systems, machine learning, large language models, software architecture, or multi-agent systems will be considered an advantage.
The position is 0.25 FTE (approximately two hours per day), starting on 1 October 2026, with an initial 12-month contract, extendable to 24 months.
Application deadline: 31 August 2026 (18:00 Europe/Sofia)
More Information & Application Links Recognised Researcher (R2): https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/454898
Contacts: kivanova@math.bas.bg and office@focus.openresearch.bg
We encourage candidates and partners to share this announcement within their networks. We look forward to receiving applications from talented researchers.
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