On 20 – 23 September, within the Year of Bulgaria in JINR, a scientific workshop “Numerical and Symbolic Scientific Computing” was held in Sofia (Bulgaria) in a hybrid format. The workshop was organized by the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies and the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), as well as by the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies JINR with the participation of the Section “Biomathematics and Scientific Computing” of the Union of Bulgarian Mathematicians and the Bulgarian Section of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

The primary objective of the workshop is the exchange of knowledge and the formation of new collaborations between JINR and Bulgarian scientists working in the fields of numerical methods, symbolic computations, scalable algorithms and their parallel implementations for solving mathematical physics problems. 30 specialists from MLIT, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic took part in the workshop.

Director of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics of the BAS prof. P. Boyvalenkov, JINR Vice-Director prof. L. Kostov, and MLIT Director prof. V. V. Korenkov opened the workshop with welcoming speeches. They underlined the importance of such international seminars and wished new directions for cooperation between the institutes of Bulgaria and JINR.

J. Busa, MLIT Deputy Director for Scientific Work, spoke about the history of the development of MLIT and the JINR Multifunctional Information and Computing Complex. E. Atanassov, Head of the Department “Scalable Computing and Applications with HPC Center” of the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of the BAS, devoted his talk to the features and perspectives of the HPC centre, he also conducted an excursion to the Institute’s data centre.

There were reports on such topics as analytical modelling and numerical solution of systems of equations that describe telecommunication systems; the mathematical modelling of biological structures by molecular dynamics methods; application of neural networks in biology tasks, numerical modelling of processes and phase transitions of neutron stars; application of scalable algorithms and their parallel implementations for solving mathematical physics problems.

A special memorial session was dedicated to the 95th anniversary of the birth of Evgeny Petrovich Zhidkov, a famous mathematician, an outstanding specialist in applied mathematics, mathematical modelling and numerical methods for solving physics problems, professor, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, an honoured scientist of the Russian Federation, a laureate of Russian and foreign awards. E. P. Zhidkov had very close scientific ties with Bulgarian scientists. J. Busa (MLIT JINR), S. Dimova (Sofia University, Bulgaria), R. Lazarov (Texas A&M University, USA), and others shared their memories about E. P. Zhidkov.

Fruitful discussions of the presented talks were held during the workshop. In conclusion, the organizers expressed their intention and hope for conducting the workshop on a regular basis.