Centre of Information Society Technologies

The Centre of Information Society Technologies (CIST, http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/cist/) is an interdisciplinary research and training institution motivated by the challenge to support the development, introduction and wide use of Information Society Technologies (IST). The main objective of the Centre is to create and establish fruitful co-operation between the University - the academic community and industry - SMEs, NGOs, public administration, local community, banking and financial institutions for co-ordinating the efforts in spreading the IST wide implementation and use. The Centre brings together the theoretical and applied interdisciplinary research in IST and their applications in the economic, social and natural sciences and devotes its capacity to strengthen the process of IST implementation and to shorten the process of scientific research development and industry applications.

CIST has been involved in more than 20 EC RTD projects, including 4 projects from 6^th Framework Programme RTD Programme (GUIDE, Kaleidoscope, BulRMCNet and PARCEL) and 15 projects from 5^th Framework Programme. Several of them are in the area of Knowledge management, Artificial Intelligence, IST implementation for professional use, e-learning and vocational training methodologies, applications development etc.

CIST is involved in organization of several regular international events and the most important of them is European Day of the Entrepreneur. The Center has established a large network of local and international industry and institutional partners, enhancing the development of the IST use and implementation and actively supporting the University-Industry-Government cooperation. CIST provides its capabilities at the service of the economic and social needs of the region and the country, in its efforts to meet the standards of the European Union active membership.