What is happening with the National Science Fund?

After the protests and arguments and statements and petitions regarding the botched grant session of the National Science Fund last winter, things fell quiet for a while. At the end of February, a new Director, Wladimir Ovtscharoff, was appointed, news snuck out that the projects from the botched session were being re-evaluated. Hope was in the air.

And then, all of a sudden, the brand new director resigned on July 2nd, a little over four months after taking over the Fund. Explaining his decision in front of the newspaper Capital, Ovtscharoff says:

"The executive board and I could not reach agreement to certain issues. The orders they give me, I cannot follow them." Conflicts arose around the annual operations plan, put together by the director  and signed by the education minister, which was greeted with hostility by the executive board. Ovtscharoff also prepared a report about misjudged projects from the last session, but the executive board refused to make it public, reports Capital.

According to the its current statutes, the Fund is steered by a two distinct entities. On one side is the Director who is responsible for composing the annual plan and the budget, announcing the funding opportunities and signing the contracts for the awards. On the other side is the executive board of nine people, which votes on the budget, determines the rules for judging projects, chooses the committees which referee the projects, approves the final rankings of the projects and has the final decision on who gets funded. In theory, the Director and the Executive Fund are supposed to supervise each other, so that no decisions are made by either one alone. In practice, if there is friction between the two, no decisions can be made at all.

The current Executive Board, also appointed back in February, is headed by Prof. Plamen Mishev of the University of National and World Economy, Sofia. Vice-president of the board is Prof. Anna-Maria Kostova Totomanova (Sofia University, philologist, head of the Department of Studies of Cyril and Methodius). The executive board has out-stubborned the director.

This is all long just a long introductions to the sudden appearance of a new name on the National Science Fund website: Valeri Kotsovsky (sp?) was quietly appointed director of the Sience Fund some time last week. A quick search of the interwebs shows that Mr. Kotsovsky is not burdened by any links to academic institutions. Instead, his background is in administration and finances. His previous position was as a head of the department of university financing and student loans at the Department of Education where he spearheaded a project to offer summer internships to Bulgarian college students.

An administrator with no experience in scientific financing will probably cause much less trouble for the Executive Fund and allow them to get back to business as usual. Phew, I'm sure they were worried for a bit there.