COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Victor Fet traveled to Bulgaria for two weeks in May 1999. Fet and a collective of about 20 Bulgarian scientists (with participation from colleagues in Greece and other European countries) will be writing a monographic book entitled Biogeography and Ecology of the Balkan Peninsula (ca. 1,000 pages). Fet will serve as co-editor of this first academic book on ecology and conservation of the Balkans published in English and available to the general scientific community. Bulgarian co-editors on this volume will be two prominent local scientists directly working with biodiversity information: Alexi Popov and Christo Deltschev. The preliminary outline of the Balkan volume was sent to Kluwer Academic Publishers in July 1999 and Fet has already received an affirmative reply concerning the publication of the monograph in the series Monographiae Biologicae. During Fet’s visit to Bulgaria, he organized and conducted field work in the Rhodope Mountains, the first Bulgarian-American zoological expedition of its kind, during which he and his colleagues initiated two cooperative projects, which include grant proposals to NSF and the National Geographic Research Fund. The two proposed projects have to do with the determination rates of specification and assessment of genetic diversity in local mountain fish and selected invertebrate groups. Fet made a strong contact during his visit with the local St. Climent Ochridsky University of Sofia. He visited the Department of Zoology and Ecology, where he shared details of the American system of education. They were so interested in what Fet shared with them that he was told they might be implementing some elements of our academic system in the University of Sofia.