Institute of the Ministry of Education and Science under the numbers KP-06-H31/18/13.12.2019 and KP-06-H63/1/13.12.2022 with scientific supervisor Prof. Dr. Robert Penchovsky.
The projects are related to creating new methods for the synthetic control of gene expression with applications in biotechnology and synthetic biology and for the inhibition of specific RNAi in bacteria to create new bacterial agents with applications in pharmacy and medicine to create new antibiotics against resistant bacteria. The research could contribute to the fight against infectious diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The assistant professor Dr. Martina Traykovska won the first prize for the best scientific work of a young microbiologist in the country from the annual national competition organized by the Foundation "Acad. Prof. Dr. Stephan Angeloff".
Her publication “Engineering antisense oligonucleotides as antibacterial agents that target FMN riboswitches and inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, and Escherichia coli”, ACS Synthetic Biology (2022) was also selected by the editors of the American Chemical Society.
The postdoctoral student Dr. Nikolet Pavlova won the second prize for the best scientific work of a young microbiologist in the country from the annual national competition organized by the Foundation "Acad. Prof. Dr. Stephan Angeloff" for the publication “Bioinformatics and Genomic Analyzes of the Suitability of Eight Riboswitches for Antibacterial Drug Targets” - Antibiotics (2022).
The Doctoral student Georgi Miloshev won the Doctoral Student of the Year award of the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" for 2022 for the publications “Small RNA-based Systems for Sensing and therapeutic applications”- New Frontiers and Applications of Synthetic Biology (2022) and “Engineering a Plasmid as a Reporter System for Quantifying Gene Expression in Escherichia Coli”, Proceedings of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2022).
Georgi Miloshev teaches biology at the 125th Sofia University and, in 2022, was awarded the "Teacher of the Year" award.
The Doctoral student Antonia Georgieva won first prize in the national competition "Young and energetic scientists" in the category for doctoral students in 2021 and second place in the EWA 2022 start-up competition in Bulgaria, organized by the Regional Agency for Entrepreneurship and Innovation - Varna (RAPIV) for a project in the field of water purification with algae.
The awarded young scientists are part of Prof. Robert Penchovsky's Scientific School of Synthetic Biology, Bioinformatics, and Rational Design of Drug Candidates.