Between science and business: The international success of four Bulgarian students from ELSYS

When it comes to great ideas age doesn’t matter. All that is needed is persistence, good preparation and a team with which to conquer new heights. Four Bulgarian students (from the ELSYS Tech High School in Sofia) who managed to win a prestigious third place at the European hackathon for defense technology like to say that they follow precisely that kind of logic.

Eleventh-graders Kaloyan Miladinov, Ognyan Razsadov, Filostratos Titopoulos, and Alexander Mechkarov, as well as their mentors Petar Kirkov (ELSYS graduate in 1997) and Kirilka Angelova, executive director of the ELSYS Graduates Association, participated in the first edition of the European Defense Tech Hackathon in Munich, part of the Festival der Zukunft.

The event aimed to provoke some of the most brilliant minds in Europe and stimulate innovation in key areas for the continent, such as protecting life in conflicts and controlling the information environment.

The ELSYS students, who were the only participants from Bulgaria, stood side by side with startup creators, cyber security specialists and students from leading universities around the world.

The theme chosen by the Bulgarian team was "Identification of anti-personnel mines using drones and artificial intelligence".

The Bulgarian teenagers showed their work on technologies for saving human lives, demonstrating their abilities and their desire to prove themselves on the international stage.

Digitization of defense

What the guys did is the digitization of an aspect of defense that has no ethical and moral considerations", Petar Kirkov told Economic.bg.

The main idea of ​​the youngsters is to provide a cheap and quick way to recognize landmines. Practically the whole concept is based on artificial intelligence that is able to identify these explosive devices. However, for this to happen, there needs to be the cooperation of many institutions since very specific information is required.

We contacted the (Bulgarian) Defense Institute, which helped us make the initial models and create the initial concept. From now on, we’ll need access to anti-personnel mines in order to be able to continue training the model", Kirkov clarifies.

During the hackathon in Germany, the young people talked to many international organizations that welcomed the idea. And in the future, their model may be bought out.

It is entirely possible that at some point an international organization will buy into the idea, but that moment has not yet come. There is a lot of work to be done because this type of acquisition comes at a later stage," says Petar Kirkov.

According to him, even if everything remains at this stage - a concept without a real working product - the youngsters are considering publishing their research so that someone in the future can use it and train their own artificial intelligence to do it.

Support for big ideas

The process of applying, generating an idea and implementing it for presentation at the hackathon was entirely the work of the four eleventh graders. But in order to succeed and get there, and beyond, they also count on the mentoring support of Kirilka Angelova - who is the executive director of the Association of ELSYS graduates.

The main mission of the Association is to support current students. We are like a bridge between current students, graduates and business", says Angelova.

She was contacted by Kaloyan Miladinov, who had already applied for the hackathon and subsequently gathered the team, which developed the idea and presented it to the jury.

The financing of the project was carried out by the management board of the ELSYS Graduates' Association.

The most serious part of the work is yet to come. Reaching third place in such a competition is not to be underestimated at all", says Kirilka Angelova.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov