Two of the three Bulgarians who took part in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists (EUCYS) at Kiel University in Germany came home with prizes. Stefan Kuyumdzhiev won third prize, and Bozhidara Puhaleva took a special award from the German company EDUR, the education ministry says.

Kuyumdzhiev's project makes it much faster to set up and use memory in artificial intelligence models. He worked on it with the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics and the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the work has already been presented at the NeurIPS conference.

His research partner was Radostin Cholakov, who won at EUCYS himself a few years ago and now studies at Stanford University. Kuyumdzhiev is a graduate of the Science and Mathematics High School in Veliko Tarnovo and now studies at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.

EDUR, based in Kiel, makes industrial pumps and technology. The company's award goes to the project with the best approach to building a small or medium-sized business, and judges praised Puhaleva's work for its use in animal breeding. She graduated from Sofia High School of Mathematics and studies at the same university in Abu Dhabi.

Puhaleva did her project with associate professor Desislava Abadjieva's research team at the Institute of Biology and Immunology of Reproduction at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with extra help from the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics. Her work has already produced a paper in the journal Animal Reproduction Science.

The third Bulgarian entrant, Melih Osman from Vasil Levski secondary school in Ardino, presented a project on bioflavonoids found in plants of the Cuscuta genus, known as dodder. His supervisor was associate professor Denitsa Teofanova from Sofia University's biology faculty. Osman is the first student from Ardino to reach an international science contest at this level.

All three got support through the "Education with Science" national programme, and Dr Konstantin Delchev led the Bulgarian team.

The education ministry says EUCYS is one of the leading international events for young researchers, bringing together talented students from many countries with projects spanning a wide range of fields. Bulgaria's entrants are chosen through the education ministry's "Young Talents" national contest, hosted by the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, which also helps prepare the students for the European contest.

The contest has run since 1989 under the EU's research and innovation programmes, and Bulgaria has taken part since 1997.

Bulgaria's special EUCYS award, named after academician Stefan Dodunekov and handed out since 2019, went this year to Zohar Distel from Israel. Distel will present his work at the National Seminar on Coding Theory or at another science event held by the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics.