INSAIT, part of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, is launching the 1st Workshop on Agentic AI for Visual Media (AAVM) at CVPR 2026. The initiative positions Bulgarian-based research at the forefront of developments in Agentic AI for visual media. The workshop is led by INSAIT faculty members Jinjin Gu and Lei Sun, and is organized in collaboration with Snap Inc. and Adobe.

INSAIT PhD student Anna-Maria Halacheva and researchers from the institute are among the co-organizers of the 6th Workshop on Open-World 3D Scene Understanding and Representations, which has been accepted to the program of CVPR - one of the most prestigious global conferences in artificial intelligence and computer vision.

The Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT), part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, has officially opened applications for the 2026 edition of its Summer Research Fellowship (SURF) program, inviting outstanding undergraduate and graduate students from around the world to take part in cutting-edge AI and computing research in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Professor Svetlana Turlakova, a Ukrainian industrial development economist, has been selected as part of the prestigious Scholars Under Threat initiative at Cornell Universityfor the 2026–27 academic year. Virtually hosted by Cornell’s Department of Economics, she will collaborate with renowned economist Professor Kaushik Basu on cutting-edge research.

INSAIT, an institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” has won a 500,000 USD award from Google. The funding will support the continuation and further development of the institute’s research in AI, robotics and adjacent areas.

The Head of the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies, Prof. Dr. Simeon Evstatiev, and the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Galina Evstatieva, held an official meeting with H.E. Mr. Nader Saad, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Arab Republic of Egypt to the Republic of Bulgaria. The meeting took place at the invitation of the Egyptian Ambassador on 20 January 2026 at the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Sofia and focused on opportunities for further cooperation between the Embassy, the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies, and the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology.

On 15 January 2026, Associate Professor Abdugani Mamadazimov from the Faculty of International Relations at the Tajik National University in Dushanbe presented his monograph dedicated to “gift diplomacy” at a lecture for students and faculty of the Centre for Eastern Languages and Studies of Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski.

INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, introduces DiffSim Trinity (diffsimtrinity.insait.ai), a new paradigm for autonomous driving built on differentiable simulation. The work builds on Waymax, the differentiable simulator developed by Waymo, a global leader in autonomous driving that originated from Google. DiffSim Trinity unifies the full sensor → action → outcome pipeline, enabling more precise, robust, and reliable autonomous driving systems.

An Open Day of the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies at the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology (FCMP) was held at the Center for Oriental Languages and Cultures (COLC). The event was organized on the eve and on the occasion of World Arabic Language Day (2025), which is celebrated annually on 18 December at the initiative of UNESCO. The guests included faculty members, under- and post-graduate students not only from the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies, but also from other programs in Sofia University, as well as Arab ambassadors, representatives of the diplomatic corps, and leading Bulgarian diplomats.

The GATE Institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” welcomed H.E. Chikahisa Sumi, Ambassador of Japan to the Republic of Bulgaria, on the occasion of his first official visit to the Institute. Prof. Sylvia Ilieva, Director of GATE, warmly received Ambassador Sumi and introduced him to the mission, development, and strategic vision of the Institute as Bulgaria’s Centre of Excellence in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence.

CSRanking ranks INSAIT ahead of institutions such as Oxford University, University College London, Technical University of Berlin.

INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” together with leading international research institutions, announces the release of SceneSplat-49k, the largest open-source collection of high-quality, complex 3D scenes in Gaussian Splatting format, along with SceneSplat-Benchmark, a comprehensive evaluation benchmark for Language Gaussian Splatting.

The Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT), part of Sofia University has announced the new edition of EXPLORER, the program designed to retain and cultivate Bulgaria’s young technological talent. Participants receive a 36,000-euro scholarship for the duration of their studies, as well as the opportunity to complete paid summer engineering internships at leading tech companies.

The GATE Institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” opened new horizons for science, innovation, and technology during the international forum Up To GATE 2025: New Horizons, which brought together leading Bulgarian and global experts in artificial intelligence and data.

Within the framework of the project KP-06-N57/4 "Research and application of machine learning algorithms in the analysis and development of highly secure software," funded by the Scientific Research Fund, with coordinator for Sofia University, prof. Milen Petrov (Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics), two experimental prototypes were created to address current cybersecurity issues – the detection of phishing sites and the protection of unmanned aerial vehicles from network attacks.

Deputy Minister of Education Academician Nikolay Vitanov, Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev, and Yordanka Chobanova from the European Commission will open the forum on 27 November.

On 19 November 2025, an international seminar dedicated to Moroccan constitutionalism in the 21st century was held at the Rectorate of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. The event was initiated by the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies, Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, Sofia University, in partnership with Gallup International Balkan’s Center for Constitutionalism and Democracy.

The GATE Institute at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” welcomed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Innovation and Growth Tomislav Donchev. The visit focused on GATE’s strategic priorities and its role as a national centre of excellence in the fields of big data and artificial intelligence.

Professor Simeon Evstatiev, Head of the Department of Arabic and Semitic Studies at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, and Associate Professor Galina Evstatieva, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, took part in the Third International Conference on Arabic Studies in Europe (Sharjah, 8–9 November 2025).

INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” announced StateSpaceDiffuser, a new diffusion-based world model that achieves substantial improvements in spatial and temporal consistency, has been accepted for presentation at NeurIPS 2025 - one of the world’s leading conferences in artificial intelligence, taking place this December in San Diego, USA.

The Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) hosted a key official visit by Prof. Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC is Europe’s premier organization for funding frontier, high-risk, high-reward research, with more than €16 billion allocated for the 2021–2027 period to support breakthrough scientific advances across disciplines.

Today in Sofia, INSAIT – the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” – and the Bulgarian National Audit Office launched Odis, an intelligent AI assistant designed to support public procurement auditors. The pilot project was unveiled during the “Artificial Intelligence and IT Audit in Safeguarding of the Public Resources” conference, organized by the National Audit Office.

INSAIT is pleased to announce a new $1 million USD fund from Google, helping us deepen our commitment to open and inclusive AI research and innovation in Central and Eastern Europe. This latest support includes funding to advance INSAIT’s research mission, cloud compute resources to accelerate advanced AI projects, and investment in local outreach initiatives such as the Tech Series and educational programs like Explorer.

INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” has announced SPEAR-1 – the first open robotic foundation model developed in Europe, achieving state-of-the-art performance with up to 20 times less robotic training data.

On October 21, 2025, the GATE Institute at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" welcomed the Minister of Education and Science, Mr. Krasimir Valchev, on a working visit.

The Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” marks a major milestone at ICCV 2025 – one of the world’s most prestigious conferences in computer vision and artificial intelligence, taking place next week in the United States. The event is expected to gather more than 10,000 leading researchers and experts from around the world.

Researchers from the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) and ETH Zurich have announced qblaze, a state-of-the-art quantum simulator that establishes a major milestone in quantum computing research.

On October 9, 2025, the Department of Indology hosted a meeting and discussion with Prof. Dr. Upender Rao from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. Prof. Rao, a key-note speaker at the international conference "East-West: Synergy of Scientific Knowledge" (October 6-8, 2025), delivered a lecture titled "Ramayana as depicted on the Temples of Cambodia."

Researchers from INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, and ETH Zurich have introduced BrokenMath — the first test designed to systematically evaluate sycophancy in mathematical reasoning with large language models (LLMs).

ObjectRelator, a research developed at INSAIT, institute of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” has been selected as a Highlight Paper at the upcoming ICCV 2025, one of the most prestigious conferences in artificial intelligence and computer vision. Only a small fraction of accepted papers are chosen for this recognition.

On October 4, 2025, within the framework of the GATE Academic Days at the Bulgarian Pavilion at Osaka Expo 2025, the Institute for Big Data and Artificial Intelligence at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" signed two cooperation agreements with the prestigious Japanese universities University of Tsukuba and Kwansei Gakuin University.

A team of INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” achieved a historic success by being one of only two teams to qualify for RoboArena – an international challenge for evaluating the latest AI models in robotics. The event was organized by researchers from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and other leading institutions, and took place as part of CoRL 2025 in Seoul.

INSAIT – the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology at Sofia University – announces the appointment of Dr. Yuxia Wang as a tenure-track faculty member. She will establish a new research group focused on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs).

INSAIT announces a landmark achievement: for the first time in history, a Bulgarian institution has a paper accepted at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL), a top research conference in robotics. The paper, titled “Generalist Robot Manipulation Beyond Action Labeled Data”, will be presented at CoRL 2025, taking place September 27–30 in Seoul, South Korea.

The Institute for Computer Science, AI, and Technology (INSAIT), part of Sofia University, Bulgaria, announces the release of MamayLM v1.0 - the first free, open and efficient Ukrainian Large Language Model that can handle both text and visual data.

The ChatToCaseStudy project aims to transform higher education in the field of computer science by introducing an innovative learning approach supported by AI chatbots. The primary focus is on the disciplines of cybersecurity and data mining, where students learn by solving real-world case studies in a digital environment.

Тhe University of Sofia hosted the annual conference and general assembly for 2025 of the prestigious international federation Euroclassica, which brings together associations of teachers of classical languages (Ancient Greek and Latin) from over 30 European countries.

On August 25, 2025, the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (FMI) at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” launched a joint doctoral school with the University of Aizu, Japan. The initiative includes early-career researchers who wish to learn about and discuss key ideas in mathematical modeling, artificial intelligence, and data analysis – all core areas of essential importance for addressing complex real-world problems in science and technology.

INSAIT, part of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” has received a new $150,000 gift from Google to advance research in multimodal generative AI. With this latest support, Google’s total contributions to INSAIT now exceed $6 million, underscoring its continued recognition of INSAIT as a world-class AI organization.

On July 2, 2025, students from the Faculty of Geology and Geography at Sofia University, who participated in the T-Lab Fair and second Stakeholder challenge of the Transform4Europe Alliance met with the Mayor of Sofia city, Mr. Vasil Terziev and the Deputy Mayor responsible for the “Green System, Ecology and Land Use” department, Ms. Nadezhda Bobcheva.

A research team from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski,” consisting of Prof. DSc Milen Zamfirov and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lyudmila Belenska-Todorova, has published a significant scientific study in the field of autism genetics.

The SINTACT project (Social Innovation Methods and Tools for Communities Affected by Transition(s)) is the first research network project involving researcher exchange, carried out under the Horizon Europe – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Staff Exchange program, granted to the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Sofia University „St. Kliment Ohridski“. It is also the first project in which Sofia University acts as the coordinator for this activity under the Horizon Europe project.

The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" received funding for the Twin2Green project under the "Research, Innovation and Digitalization for Smart Transformation" 2021-2027 Programme (PRIDST).

On April 23, 2025, in front of the Exhibition Greenhouse at the University Botanical Garden – Balchik, the first in a series of educational workshops was held with primary school students from “Hristo Botev” Secondary School, Balchik.

At the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" started the project ConsuWAIS (Consumers Wanted AI Suport), with principal investigator Dr. Svetlana Bialkova. The project is award winning by VIHREN 2024 programme of the Bulgarian National Science Fund.

At the beginning of 2025 Sofia University „St. Kliment Ohridski“ received an official confirmation and endorsement certificate from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the Master’s programme „Nuclear Technology, Management and Innovations“ taught entirely in English. This is the first technology, management and innovation programme in the nuclear field in Bulgaria to receive such international recognition.

On 24.06.2024, professor Pavel Pavlovitch presented the volume “The Role of the Arabic Language in Cultural and Commercial Exchanges along the Silk Roads” at a scholarly conference in Rabat. This volume and the conference are part of a trilateral collaborative project involving UNESCO, the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Foundation, and the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO).

On June 3, 2024, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" became a full member of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). The membership was officially confirmed by the EFMD's relevant committee. The full membership of FEBA, Sofia University was ratified by the EFMD General Assembly on 10 June 2024 in Bologna, Italy. FEBA's Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Atanas Georgiev attended the event as a full member of EFMD for the first time.

Department of Pharmaceutical and Applied Organic Chemistry (FPOH), Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, SU"St. Cl. Ohridski" held its annual Scientific Seminar from May 31 to June 2, 2024, at the "Prof. Tsv. Bonchev" educational and scientific base, Gyolechitsa.

"Prometheus" is a new project in the field of Digital Epigraphy, in which the University of Sofia represents Bulgaria in partnership with academic and cultural institutions from the region, such as the Archaeological Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia in Skopje, the Institute of Balkan Studies in Belgrade, the University of Belgrade, and the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.