About me

Originally, I am from a great little country called Bulgaria. Throughout my life I was lucky to live in Russia, shortly in Austria, and I am currently in the United States, which has generously offered me the benefits of its first class education. I graduated from Davidson College in 2005, and now study in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Virginia.

If you need a brief version of what will come next, please email me for a resume. If you have a few minutes, keep reading and I will do my best to summarize my life here. My childhood memories are from a town called Kozloduy, where Bulgaria's only nuclear power plant (NPP) is located. My father was the twentieth person to sign up when it was built and he worked there for a long time. My mother was a math teacher and thanks to her I acquired my interest in mathematics. Thanks to her preparation, I became a regular participant in the annual mathematics olympiads. As for the interest in computers... I got that one on my own. Our first 8 bit computer was powerful enough to load a game that I used to play when I was four years old, almost five. One evening my father was trying to get me to sleep but I wanted to play. He told me that the computer was not working, and that would not be possible. I was disappointed but went to check on the machine. I noticed that the box has been opened and once I looked inside, one of the cards has been unplugged. I put it back together and the computer worked. My father told me later that he was trying to get me to sleep by unplugging that card. The next memory that comes to mind is my pride that I was readying a book called "I'm a 9 Year Old Programmer" while I was eight.

At first grade my parents signed me up for karate. The original idea was to do this as a sport and stay in shape. Over time I improved and the instructor picked me for the team. I went to a few national competitions and still keet up with my practices. Little did I know that the passion, the discipline, and the skills I gained would stay with me for a lifetime. In addition to karate, I did six months of tae-kwon-do and tang-soo-do, about a year and a half of kenpo, and, currently, I am practicing wing chun. If I have time, I try to go an aikido practice too, but wing chun seems to be one of the most direct and effective styles I have every seen, so I am very happy to have a club near me.

While I was a fifth grader my father was chosen to represent the NPP at the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). Bulgaria's region is represented at the Moscow office of WANO, so the family moved there during the summer of 1994. My parents spoke Russian, but neither I, nor my younger brother, Peter, did. The embassy was far away and the classes were not daily, so we went to a regular Russian school across the street: to be more precise, it was School #921. Peter and I watched Russian TV over the summer and since Bulgarian and Russian are both Slavic languages, we picked it up. After spending a month in school, I was able to speak in Russian. Writing takes longer to master. A funny memory is that after a year, i.e. in seventh grade, my Russian teacher called me to talk about a dictation test. She told me that I made too many mistakes and was surprised I have made it all the way to seventh grade and still make such mistakes. I explained the situation, she laughed and corrected the grade. I guess at this point I realized that my spoken Russian, and my name for that matter, allowed me to pass as a Russian. Currently, my skills have deteriorated because I have not been speaking actively for over ten years.

After my father's contract with WANO was over, the family went back to Kozloduy. I was accepted at the American College of Sofia (ACS). That is when I learned English well, and got my first insights into what I wanted to do with my life. Up to that moment I had interests in computers and mathematics, and I finally found a field to let me incorporate them and apply in reality: physics. I kept going to competitions and olympiads, and in 1999 I was sponsored to be in the SciTech summer program at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel.

During my last year at ACS, my father took a position at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and after my graduation, the family moved to Vienna. Then, it was time for me to go to Davidson and start my college education. Two of my high school friend, Yurii Kornilev and Mario Prohasky, were also going to the same college and we were lucky to have each to make the transition easy. Eventually, ACS and Davidson College established a good relationship, I hope it was due to our performance, and many people follwed us at the College.

I remember putting down in the application that I will do my best to improve the sciences at Davidson College, and I stayed true to that promise. By the time I graduated, I became the student representative of North and South Carolina at the Society of Physics Students (SPS), and helped in organizing a seminar at my college. I was active and at the graduation I received the physics award - another moment in my life that makes me proud.

My research included the study of defects in InGaAsP semiconductors, and I was interested in how to make the basic building block, the materials, better, so I applied to the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) department at UVa and was accepted to enroll in 2005. During the last year of my college studies I did two independent research projects in computing, and that area was particularly interesting to me. At the MSE department I was lucky to have Dr. Leonid Zhigilei take me as an assistant and I am currently working for him to develop a model that will simulate interaction between tubular bodies, such as carbon nanotubes and collagen.