Software Engineering and Information Systems

The Software Engineering and Information Systems Department established in October 2014 as union between two of departments in IMI, which are in the basis of the development of the informatics in Bulgaria – Software Engineering Department and Information Systems Department.

The Software Engineering department originates in the “Theory of finite automata group”, established in 1963 as part of the then called Institute of Mathematics with Computing Center. In 1966, the group increased and was renamed to “Theoretical problems of cybernetics”. In 1970, after the Institute itself was renamed to Institute of mathematics and mechanics and was included in a larger research and educational unit, a new department was created with the name “Foundations of cybernetics and control theory”. Fifteen years later, the department “Automation of software production” emerged, which later received its present name “Software engineering”. For years, the department has been headed by Prof. Dr. Avram Eskenazi, and since 2013 by Prof. Dr. Nely Maneva.

The department of Information Systems originates from Computer-Aided Programming group formed in July 1963 within the Numerical Methods Department at the Institute of Mathematics of BAS. In November, 1968 the Department on Computer-Aided Programming was established from this group. Later, in February 1971, it was renamed to the Computer Science Department. In 1995 was renamed to Information Research Department. In 2009 it was renamed as Information Systems Department.  Since its establishing for many years the Department was leaded by Prof. D-r Peter Barnev, and since 2006 by  Prof.DSc Peter Stanchev. Since March 2011 the Laboratory for Digitization of Scientific and Cultural Heritage (former Digital Humanities Department) became part of the department. For 30 years, from 1976, the Department had been the main organizer of annual International Programming School as well as the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Programming.

Priority research areas:

• Software technologies and information systems:

• business modeling and software design, 
• context-based information systems,
• data analysis and modeling,
• data quality and security management,
• data space modeling,
• algorithms and architectures,
• blockchain technologies,
• technologies and models supporting accessibility for people with special needs,
• ethical and legal aspects of research.

• Artificial intelligence:

• methods for extracting knowledge from multimodal data,
• models for detecting visual patterns in computer vision,
• new architectures of neural networks and deep learning models,
• transparency of machine learning models,
• responsible artificial intelligence.

With applications in the areas:

• biomedicine,
• healthcare,
• smart agriculture,
• environmental monitoring,
• cybersecurity,
• economics and management,
• education,
• cultural heritage,
• open science.