03.02.2025
At the end of January 2025, a delegation from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration (FEBA) at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski visited Arizona State University (ASU) in the USA, where meetings were held in connection with joint activities under the cooperation agreement officially signed in 2024 between the two universities during the last visit there. The delegation was organized and led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Atanas Georgiev, Dean of FEBA and Acting Director of the Institute of Law, Economics and Intellectual Property at Sofia University, in his role as project manager of the TWIN4ECO.eu project.
The visit was attended by the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Economics with the portfolio "Research, Innovation, and Projects" Assoc. Prof. Dr. Todor Yalamov and the Deputy Director of Net-Zero Lab at the Department of Industrial Economics and Management Chief Assist. Prof. Dr. Mariya Trifonova. The discussed partnerships are in several main areas: energy and industrial decarbonization, innovation and entrepreneurship, intellectual property and technology transfer.
The delegation was welcomed at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, where FEBA presented its new Bachelor’s degree program in International Trade and Investment taught entirely in English, its internationally accredited MBA programs and its women's entrepreneurship initiatives in the energy sector.
At the end of the visit, the FEBA delegation also participated in the Southwest Clean Hydrogen and Beyond Workshop, a clean energy and decarbonization industry conference organized by AzCaNE, a platform for the three major universities in the state of Arizona to partner with institutional and business stakeholders.
Arizona State University (ASU) ranks first among U.S. universities in the Times Higher Education's international Impact Rankings (a ranking for "most sustainable university"), and also tops the ranking for the most innovative university, including by number of patents. The university is also currently ranked 1st by total number of students in the US.
Arizona State University (ASU) has undergone a key transformation over the past 23 years under the leadership of its President Prof. Dr. Michael Crowe, with much of the change related to ASU taking a more active role in solving societal challenges, creating an inclusive and innovative environment, linking multiple research teams and units within the university to work on collaborative projects and to create new structural units. ASU's transformation along its own model, The New American University, has been an inspiration to other universities in the United States and around the world.
The ASU site visit program was organized by the LightWorks Center under the direction of William Brandt, with the participation of Maria Toshkova of ASU's University Design Institute (UDI). A meeting was also held with LightWorks Director and Energy Forward Initiative Coordinator Gary Dirks.
A number of meetings were held at Arizona State University's major units, centers, and laboratories, including:
- ASU Knowledge Enterprise
- ASU LightWorks
- Thunderbird School of Global Management
- W. P. Carey School of Business
- University Design Institute (UDI)
- Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
-Global Center for Technology Transfer
- New Carbon Economy Consortium
- etc.
As a result of the visit, researchers from both countries continue to coordinate and work on the preparation of joint projects and academic exchanges.