Bulgaria to provide 3.3 mln euro for 21 innovative projects

The candidates were selected as part of the 13th competition session of the National Innovation Fund managed by the Bulgarian Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion Agency (BSMEPA), the ministry said in a statement.

The projects include a monitoring system aimed at preventing serious diseases, a technology for production of fire-resistant construction elements from glass waste, an approach for bio-printed cartilage implants, a solution for the assessment of microplastic contamination in the aquatic environment as well as an innovative educational application, among others.

The projects are in the four areas supported by the fund - informatics, information and communication technologies, mechatronics and clean technologies, healthy living industry and biotechnology as well as new technologies in the creative and leisure industries.

The National Innovation Fund is providing financing of up to 500,000 levs per project. So far, a total of 100 million levs have been paid to support over 500 projects selected in the previous 12 sessions, the innovation ministry said.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)