• Center for the Study of Democracy – disinformation and policy research;
• Ontotext – semantically-enriched database of debunks, AI tools for content verification;
• Prof. Nicoleta Corbu (College of Communication and Public Relations, SNSPA) – extensive research in the field of political communication, with a focus on media effects, disinformation, and news consumption.
• Funky Citizens – media literacy in the Balkans, running the factual.ro political fact-checking platform in Romania;
• Dr Ralitsa Kovacheva – journalism research in hybrid threats;
• Dr Bissera Zankova – Media 21 Foundation – media freedom; media literacy; law.

Under the leadership of Prof. Kalina Bontcheva, we established a new regional multi-disciplinary alliance of researchers, fact-checkers and other experts, to act as a catalyst and an amplifier of national and regional actions against disinformation.

Key staff

Assoc. prof. Milena Dobreva is the Research Leader on disinformation at GATE Institute.

Prof. Kalina Bontcheva is the head of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) group at the University of Sheffield. She has coordinated the FP7 PHEME project on rumour and disinformation analysis and is the scientific director of the H2020 WeVerify project on collaborative content verification. Since 2014, Prof. Bontcheva has been researching methods for disinformation analysis combining NLP methods for analysing the textual content with machine learning models for credibility, veracity, and stance detection. These are combined also with the analysis of the mention and hashtag-based networks, in the context of misinformation spread, voting intentions and online abuse.

Prof. Ivan Koychev is the Data Analytics research group leader and leads the MSc. Program in Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery. He gained experience in a number of academic and industrial projects including contribution to seven EU funded projects. His main research interests are in the areas of Machine Learning, AI, Information Retrieval, Data/Text Mining and their applications to disinformation analysis. He also brings in a strong track record in Natural Language Processing in Bulgarian and English. His most recent publications have focused on deep learning methods for check worthiness analysis (i.e. whether a given post needs to be fact-checked or not), detection of deception in political debates, verification of claims about images, and detection of toxicity in news articles.

Selected publications

1. Carolina Scarton, Diego F. Silva, Kalina Bontcheva. Measuring What Counts: The case of Rumour Stance Classification. Proc. of the 1st Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 10th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (AACL-IJNLP), 2020, http://aacl2020.org/program/accepted/
2. Alex Nikolov, Giovanni Da San Martino, Ivan Koychev, Preslav Nakov, Team Alex at CLEF CheckThat! 2020: Identifying Check-Worthy Tweets With Transformer Models, CLEF 2020, 22-25 September 2020, Thessaloniki, Greece., https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.02931
3. Dimitrina Zlatkova, Preslav Nakov, Ivan Koychev, Fact-Checking Meets Fauxtography: Verifying Claims About Images, Proc. EMNLP-IJCNLP, Publisher: Association for Computational Linguistics, 2019, doi:10.18653/v1/D19-1216, https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.11722
4. Michal Lukasik, Kalina Bontcheva, Trevor Cohn, Arkaitz Zubiaga, Maria Liakata, Rob Procter. Gaussian processes for rumour stance classification in social media. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS) 37 (2), 1-24. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1145/3295823
5. Ahmet Aker, A Sliwa, F Dalvi, Kalina Bontcheva. Rumour verification through recurring information and an inner-attention mechanism. Online Social Networks and Media 13, 100045. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.osnem.2019.07.001
6. Todor Mihaylov, Tsvetomila Mihaylova, Preslav Nakov, Lluís Màrquez, Georgi D. Georgiev, Ivan Koychev, The dark side of news community forums: opinion manipulation trolls, Internet Research, vol:28, issue:5, 2018, pages:1292-1312, ISSN (online):1066-2243, https://doi.org/10.1108/IntR-03-2017-0118, https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IntR-03-2017-0118/full/html

Contact

Milena Dobreva, milena.dobreva@gate-ai.eu

Dean Palejev, PhD, who leads the Digital Health application domain at the GATE Institute and is also an Associate Professor at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, presented GATE’s flagship project on Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr Ivan Koychev –  a neuropsychiatrist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a Senior Clinical Researcher at the University of Oxford introduced the Dementias Platform UK.

Dr Dimitar Jetchev, the CTO and a co-founder of Inpher Inc., (a US-Swiss based start-up developing a platform for privacy-preserving data analytics) and a Professor of Mathematics at EPFL, Switzerland presented privacy-preserving AI-based diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s disease.

Vassil Vassilev, PhD, Head of the Cyber Security Research Centre of London Metropolitan University, UK and a leading researcher at GATE Institute spoke about the GATE Data platform.

The moderator was Prof. Graham Kemp, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

The Director of the GATE Institute, Prof. Sylvia Ilieva, participated also in the main programme of the Biotech Atelier earlier on 1^st October 2021, and in particular in the session “Digital Health: Supporting Health Through Technologies”. In her presentation, she focused on AI and data technologies as key enablers of the healthcare digital transformation and underlined the huge potential for health data sharing and utilization. Prof. Ilieva outlined three main principles for the successful adoption of AI in healthcare – data and security, analytics and insights, and shared experience. “We need to convince people that data sharing in healthcare is for the benefit of the society.”, concluded prof. Ilieva.

The Director of GATE, Prof. Silvia Ilieva presented the goals and areas of activity of the Institute. “GATE is an alternative for young people in the field of Information technology,” said Prof. Ilieva.

Assoc. Prof. Desislava Petrova-Antonova, Lead of the Research group “Future cities” presented GATE’s pilot project “City Digital Twin” and its ongoing tasks, and Assoc. Prof. Dean Palejev revealed some highlights in the activities of the Research group “Digital health”, led by him. Prof. Ivan Koychev presented the priorities in the research area “Data Analysis”. The presentation (available here: https://gate.gate-ai.eu/share.cgi?ssid=03Ss8bS ) was followed by a logical quiz, which the participants managed very well, and a questionnaire related to the professional experience of the candidates and respectively to the areas of career development at GATE.

Official guests of the event were Anna Panagopoulou, Director of the European Research Area and Innovation at the Research and Innovation Directorate General of the European Commission and Nikolay Denkov, Minister of Education and Science.  Prof. Anastas Gerdjikov, Rector of Sofia University, sent an official address to the forum.

On behalf of the European Commission Anna Panagopoulou highly appreciated the achievements of the GATE Institute. “The European Commission is proud to testify very good progress of the GATE project in Bulgaria. We see it as a real game-changer. The subject of the GATE project itself – Big data and Artificial intelligence – is not only relevant to the biggest societal challenges today but it is also in a field of utmost strategic relevance for the EU and for digital transformation. GATE shows that R&I investments and reforms can move the country up on the stairways to excellence. We are proud of supporting this project”, concluded Anna Panagopoulou.

The Minister of Education and Science, acad. Nikolay Denkov was delighted to attend a GATE’s event again. “I have always been impressed by the skills and ability of prof. Ilieva and her team to make the dreams come through. Starting with something that was very allusive in the beginning – really a dream, to make it something that has not only clear idea and substance but also literally takes a shape – the shape of the building, the shape of your core priorities that you define in the discussions today and tomorrow. And all that gives the promise of the very successful development of your Institute. So, from our side, I can only state that the Ministry of Education and Science will continue to support this Institute as it has been doing in the last years.”

In his greeting, the Rector of Sofia University, prof. Anastas Gerdjikov stressed the GATE’s contribution to the transformation of the university into a research hub. He has pointed that GATE is a new Institute but in the two years of its existence GATE has managed to significantly strengthen its research potential by hiring high-quality researchers and young researchers not only from Bulgaria but also from all over the world. It has elaborated and implemented an ambitious and visionary research agenda driven by the global technological trends and national, EU and world research and innovation priorities. “I would like to share my appreciation of the hard work and enthusiasm of the whole GATE team even in these hard pandemic times. We are proud that GATE is part of our University and we will continue to support its activities.”, said prof. Gerdjikov.

The Director of GATE, Prof. Silvia Ilieva, presented the achievements of the Institute for the past year. She noted that the Institute has worked hard in its four research areas: data management, analysis, visualization and engineering, and in the four strategic application areas: Future Cities, Digital Healthcare, Intelligent Government and Smart Industry.  GATE has been implementing three leading pilot projects – a pilot project for the city, for Alzheimer’s disease and for the detection of disinformation, as well as 7 joint projects. The number of researchers has increased by 25% and currently stands at 37 people from 8 countries. The published 19 new scientific articles represent an increase of 58% compared to the previous year. The construction of the infrastructure continues with the Institute’s building, the development of the GATE platform and the establishment of the City living laboratory.

As a national hub of the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA), GATE has started preparations for building a Bulgarian data space. It has been nominated nationally to apply for the European Digital Innovation Hub for Data and Artificial Intelligence. It continues to be even more active in the Big Data Value Association and the Open Geospatial Consortium, which contributes to maintaining high quality and relevance in research. New cooperation agreements have been signed with stakeholders.

The Institute’s future plans include completing the infrastructure and equipment of GATE laboratories. The institute will continue to implement the strategy for attracting Bulgarian scientists who have studied or worked abroad, as well as young researchers. Partnerships in collaborative projects and within IDSA will be developed and deepened, and new partnerships will be built within the GATE research and application domains.

The two visionary, high-level panels on the first day were dedicated to Data Spaces and Ethical, Explainable and Trustworthy AI.

The three insightful panels on the second day demonstrated how big data and artificial intelligence can help tackle societal and economic challenges in the GATE strategic application areas: Future Cities – City Digital Twin, Digital Health and Intelligent Government –  Disinformation. The panels were opened with keynotes by outstanding researchers and innovators, followed by talks of prominent international speakers, GATE research team leaders and discussions.

During the second day of the event, GATE researchers demonstrated their results through short video pitches presented between the panels.

More than 240 participants registered for the event. They were mainly from research institutions and technological companies.

PANEL DETAILS

The two visionary, high-level panels on the first day were dedicated to Data Spaces and Ethical, Explainable and Trustworthy AI.

The Data spaces panel made an overview of the key enablers for data spaces, outlined the challenges for building data spaces and in this context highlighted the role of trust in data sharing. It was moderated by Edward Curry, Vice president of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA). The keynote speaker, Markos Matsas, from the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA) focused on the main steps to build and run data spaces. The panellists Svetlogor Kirov from the State e-Government Agency, Bulgaria, Radoslav Rizov from Telelink Business Services, Bulgaria and Sylvia Ilieva from GATE discussed the conditions for building data spaces in Bulgaria and outlined the role of government, industry and GATE in this process. The role of the industry as a data provider and the need to build strategic partnerships between stakeholders were highlighted.

Irena Pavlova, Manager of European Programmes and Projects at GATE, was the moderator of the panel on Trustworthy, Explainable and Ethical AI. The panel was focused on how policymakers, ethics experts, industry players and researchers were joining forces to realize human-centred, fair and trustful AI, as the main enabler of our Digital Future. It discussed the European framework and recommendations in the field, the main steps towards ethical AI,  state-of-the-art in responsible AI research and how the industry is implementing responsible AI solutions in their organizations.

Anna Felländer from the AI Sustainability, Centre, Sweden was the keynote speaker. The panellists were Galia Angelova from the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, BAS, Andrea Passarella from CNR, Italy and Anderson Santana de Oliveira from SAP, France.

The three insightful panels on the second day were focused on City Digital Twin, Digital Health and Disinformation. The panels were opened with keynotes by outstanding researchers and innovators, followed by talks of prominent international speakers, GATE research team leaders and discussions.

The panel “City Digital Twins: Inclusiveness and added value chances” presented the current achievements, challenges and digital chances of city digital twins, focusing on their exploitation for building more livable, inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities. The panel was moderated by Graham Kemp, Professor in the Data Science and AI Division, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.

The keynote speaker, Tuomo Tuikka, from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland demonstrated how data sharing enables future-bound smart cities solutions based on the IDSA, GAIA-X and BDVA initiatives.

Stefano De Panfilis from FIWARE Foundation presented how FIWARE domain-specific enablers and data models provide a technological base for building data spaces and facilitating the development of city digital twins. The results of the collaboration between the Digital Twin Cities Centre in Gothenburg and GATE in the Future cities application domain were shared by Anders Logg of Chalmers University, Sweden and Dessislava Petrova-Antonova of GATE. The Deputy-mayor of Sofia Municipality Gencho Kerezov provided insights on the joint initiatives of Sofia Municipality and GATE for creating a better urban environment and living conditions. The follow-up discussion focused on the main challenges in building a digital twin such as data access, the complexity of the processes and models, and sustainability.

The panel “Opportunities and Prospects in Digital Health” discussed how Big Data and Artificial Intelligence support the development of analytical models in the research of Alzheimer’s disease. Dean Palejev, Senior researcher at GATE Institute and leader of the Digital Health application area moderated the panel. The keynote speaker, Alexander Eckehart Urban, Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, presented the results from a novel approach for finding complex structural variants in the human genome.

Other talks in the session described the work on a risk calculator that will be used as a pre-screening method for Alzheimer’s disease in order to avoid costly and invasive medical procedures; AI methods for fast identification of suitable antisense oligonucleotides for a given target protein implicated in disease; and applying knowledge graphs for integrating different types of data from various sources.

The panellists were Alexander Schliep from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Dr Ivan Koychev from the University of Oxford, UK and Todor Primov from Ontotext, Bulgaria.

The third insightful panel “Disinformation research and policy responses in the Balkans” was concentrated on the latest fact-checking, analysis and research on disinformation campaigns in Bulgaria and Central and Eastern Europe. It was moderated by Kalina Bontcheva, Research Leader on disinformation at GATE and Head of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) group at the University of Sheffield. The keynote talk was about tackling disinformation on Facebook among Bulgarian users. It was given by Veni Markovski, Member of the European Commission Expert Group on Tackling Disinformation and Promoting Digital Literacy Through Education and Training.

Maria Bielikova from the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies in Slovakia introduced the work of the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) and focused on the AI-based support of fact-checking process. Katarína Klingová presented a GLOBSEC study on the vulnerability to the disinformation of eight  Central and East European countries. Ralitsa Kovacheva from Sofia University and Factcheck.bg outlined the activities of the only platform in Bulgaria dedicated solely to fact-checking. Milena Dobreva from GATE talked about the research carried out by members of the Institute on disinformation in Bulgarian Facebook groups and tweets and the work towards the creation of tools for identifying disinformation in the Bulgarian language.

The event offered a lot of interaction possibilities within the GATE Ecosystem and the broader community.

Project BG05M2OP001-1.003-0002-C01 „Big Data for Smart Society“ (GATE) of Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski is funded by the TEAMING Phase 2 of the EC Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 Programme and co-funded by the Operational Programme Science and Education for Smart Growth 2014-2020, co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund.

The official opening could be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDINWqC6lAc

The panels could be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNA5-xfGfopuysVZ4YzNcDQ/featured