My real name is Стефан Маринов (in Bulgarian) and this is a page about me and (parts of) my life.

Generally, I am interested in programming, investment opportunities, ICT management, and problem solving. I tend to have a strong opinion on many problems of society in Bulgaria, Europe, and the world at large. That is why I am politically active and work on various projects supporting causes like open data and digital privacy.

More specifically, I enjoy analysing and getting sense out of large amounts of digital data and have some experience with algorithms, statistics, machine learning, computational linguistics, natural language processing, backend software engineering, web technologies, information security, robotics, autonomous vehicles, computer vision, control theory, physics, technology transfer, and public speaking (not necessarily in this order). For a more systematic overview of my education history and professional experience, please consult my curriculum vitae.

Web Presence. On the Internet I tend to use my full name, or smarnv / smarinov, e.g. Website, GitLab, LinkedIn, Stack Overflow.

I enjoy studying and using some languages (ISO 639-3 codes) to various degrees – active: eng, deu, bul; learning (on and off): ita, lat, ron, ell; passive to low (or almost none): isv, rus, hbs, ukr, pol, ces, slk, bel, spa, nld, epo, nor, fra, tur.

🇦🇪, 🇦🇹, 🇧🇪, 🇧🇬, 🇨🇭, 🇨🇿, 🇩🇪, 🇩🇰, 🇫🇮, 🇫🇷, 🇬🇧, 🇬🇷, 🇭🇺, 🇮🇳, 🇮🇹, 🇳🇱, 🇳🇴, 🇷🇴, 🇷🇸, 🇷🇺, 🇸🇪, 🇸🇰, 🇸🇲, 🇹🇷, 🇺🇦, 🇻🇦

• 11/2016, DFG FOR 2237 Symposium 2016, Tübingen, Germany – computational linguistics, archaeology of the Americas, biology
• 13/2014, TLT Workshop 2014, Tübingen, Germany – computational linguistics, language technology, linguistic modelling, NLP
• 10/2013, DGR Tage 2013, Munich, Germany – robotics, mechatronics, artificial intelligence, cyber-physical and cognitive systems
• 09/2013, LSDMA Symposium 2013, Karlsruhe, Germany –- big data management in science, large-scale data analytics
• 11/2012, MMEP Workshop 2012, Cambridge, United Kingdom –- modelling and management of engineering processes
• 06/2012, Journées EDP 2012, Biarritz, France – partial differential equations, inverse problems, topology, mathematical optimisation
• 10/2011, DGR Tage 2011, Karlsruhe, Germany – robotics, mechatronics, artificial intelligence, cyber-physical and cognitive systems
• co-organised: Шеметна Варна (2017, 2016, 2015, 2014), talKIT (2013, 2012), StartupLive Karlsruhe (2012)
• attended: Pioneers Festival (2015), Hannover Messe (2014, 2013, 2011), Automatica (2014), Electronica (2014), Gründermagnet Founding Event (2012), StartupLive Vienna (2012), StartupLive Karlsruhe (2011), EBSpreneurship Forum (2011), talKIT (2011)

• 10/2014, KIT Distinction for Social Commitment, Karlsruhe, Germany – given to selected few (<0.3%) KIT students
• 05/2014, Finals, Be.Project 2014, Zurich, Switzerland – among the 9 best international startup ideas (r2b-student)
• 06/2013, 11th Field Robot Event, Prague, Czech Republic – 1st Place in Cooperative Task (Kamaro-Engineering)
• 05/2012, KIT Research Student Award, Karlsruhe, Germany – given to selected few (<0.3%) KIT students for their research projects
• 10/2011, StartupLive Karlsruhe #1, Karlsruhe, Germany – special prize “Energy” by KIC InnoEnergy SE (r2b-student)
• 04/2010, Finals, National Informatics Olympiad, Pleven, Bulgaria – accepted to the country's best Computer Science program
• 05/2007, International Physics and Mathematics Festival, Kiev, Ukraine – elected as team leader of the winning team in Physics
• 11/2006, International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO), Mumbai, India – represented Bulgaria after a four-round selection contest

Social commitment is of paramount importance to me, so I have been actively involved in a few civil and entrepreneurial initiatives. For instance, I have been helping with IT and internal affairs at community service organisations like Rotaract Varna-Euxinograd and PionierGarage, and also co-initiated r2b-student – a non-profit organisation where university students can bring research projects towards successful market launch.

Feel free to contact me with any suggestions, requests, or other remarks via my public e-mail adress or one of my online profiles listed at the beginning of this page. I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Please be patient, though, as my inbox tends to get full fairly quickly and sometimes I need a little more time before I am able to answer the message. On the plus side, if you send me qualitative feedback and allow me to, I'd love to post it unaltered (and anonymised) for the whole world to see!