Communication/review Biomath 1 (2012), 1209307, 1–1

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Volume ░, Number ░, 20░░ 

BIOMATH

 ISSN 1314-684X

Editor–in–Chief: Roumen Anguelov  

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BIOMATH
h t t p : / / w w w . b i o m a t h f o r u m . o r g / b i o m a t h / i n d e x . p h p / b i o m a t h / Biomath Forum

In Memoriam
Antony Popov (1962–2012)

We are deeply saddened by the sudden death at the age
of 49 of our colleague Associate Professor Dr. Antony
Popov, member of the Department ”Information Tech-
nologies”, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia
University. Tony was a very good mathematician, spe-
cializing in the area of Pattern Recognition. He was able
to master and apply techniques from several important
subfields of this broad area: mathematical morphology,
interval analysis, and fuzzy sets. Dr. Popov pioneered
the methods and theory of mathematical morphology
in Bulgaria. This particular research filed requires solid
foundation and understanding of geometry, set theory,
topology, analysis, and statistics. Tony was an example
of a true professional who combined the knowledge
from all of these fields to produce several excellent
papers on important mathematical morphology topics.
Many of his colleagues from the ”Biomathematics”
group had been active participants in the M.S. program
”Biomedical Informatics”. This graduate program was
created under Tony’s leadership about ten years ago.
He put a lot of effort to build the program up, and

found a way to involve his colleagues from various
departments: mathematics, biophysics, bioengineering,
and biology. Many students got enrolled and graduated
from the program producing quality theses. Tony always
was encouraging them and was really happy for their
success. Dr. Popov was also actively involved in organiz-
ing the regular Bioinformatics & Computational Biology
seminar supported jointly by the AgroBio Institute (ABI)
and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics. The
seminar has served as an incubator for many new ideas,
attracted new Ph.D students, facilitated the establishment
of international collaborative projects, publications, and
software development and implementation.

Tony was instrumental in organizing the School for
Young Scientists as a workshop held at the yearly
BIOMATH conference. He was pretty much the sole
organizer of the last year workshop, and planned the
entire scientific program for the current 2012 one. During
the last several years, Dr. Popov was actively involved in
the research project ”Computer Simulation and Innova-
tive Model-Based Study of Bioprocesses” supported by
the National Science Fund established by the Bulgarian
Ministry of Education. Several of his Ph.D. students
became a part of the research team. Tony will be always
remembered as a very helpful, modest, and trusted col-
league with a big hart. He was and will be an example of
a real gentleman for all of us. He will be dearly missed!

From: Tony’s colleagues; Department of Biomathemat-
ics, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgar-
ian Academy of Science; Faculty of Mathematics and
Informatics, Sofia University ”St. Kliment Ohridski”;
Bioinformatics group at the AgroBio Institute, Sofia;
Genomic Signal Processing Laboratory, Texas A&M
University.

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