Dimitar Djilianov has been the Head of the Abiotic Stress Group at Agrobioinstitute, Sofia, Bulgaria, and also a Leader of the Bulgarian participation groups in projects of EU F5P, F6P, F7P, and Horizon, since 2000. He has been an Associate Professor, and since 2013, a Professor at the same institute. Before his current role, he was a Researcher (1985–1994) at the Central Laboratory for Genetic Engineering (present ABI) and a Head of Group (1995–1999) at the Institute of Genetic Engineering (present ABI). In 2003, he was awarded the JSPS Fellowship (Plant Molecular Biology and Physiology of Stress Tolerance).
Dr. Petko Mladenov has been an assistant professor at the Agrobioinstitute, Agricultural Academy of Bulgaria since 2015. He graduated with an MS.c. degree in Biotechnology, Gene, and Cell Engineering in 2008 at Sofia University, Bulgaria, and received a Ph.D. degree in Genetics from Agrobioinstitute, Agricultural Academy of Bulgaria in 2015. During his Ph.D., he received fellowships at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Grenoble, which is a part of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology. After achieving his Ph.D., he received a JSPS fellowship at the Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), Japan, and recently finished his President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. His past and current research is related mainly to studying the desiccation tolerance of the resurrection plant H. rhodopensis using different physiological, metabolomics, proteomics, and genomics techniques. He is also trained in CRISPR/CAS genome editing by particle bombardment in wheat.
Strahil Berkov is a Professor at the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He received his M.Pharm. at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Higher Medical School, and his Ph.D. at the Institute of Botany, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. After graduating, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Barcelona, Spain. Later, he worked at AgroBio Institute (Bulgaria) as an Assistant Professor (2009) and an Associate Professor (2012). His research interests include the chemoecology of amaryllidaceae and tropane alkaloids, chemotaxonomy, and metabolomics.
Dr. Lyudmila Simova-Stoilova has a position as an Associate Professor and has been working at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Genetics, Bulgarian Academy of Science, Sofia, Bulgaria, since 2011. She received her M.Sc. from the Faculty of Biology, Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1986, and her Ph.D. in biology from the Cardiology Research Center, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia in 1993. Her research interests are biochemistry, molecular biology, proteomics, post-translational modifications, transcriptomics, metabolomics, abiotic stress, chaperones, proteases, and protease inhibitors. She is a member of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria, Subdivision of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, and the Federation of European Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB).
