ACS Graduate to Represent Bulgaria at International AI Olympiad

July 9, 2026  --- For Spas Stoimenov '26, curiosity never stopped with creating a series of 2D games populated by dragons, treasures, and underground caves. Quite the opposite. He is constantly looking for new challenges. It was this mindset that led him to enroll in the Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science program at the American College of Sofia, eager to test himself and continue growing.

Although he has devoted himself to the exact sciences, Spas's interests do not exactly follow a linear path. When he is not studying Newton's laws, he performs magic. More specifically, card tricks.

"I like the mystery. I like the opportunity to create an experience. In a way, that is connected to game development," says Spas, who balances long hours in front of a computer with mountain hiking, windsurfing, and woodcarving.

Over time, he began deliberately looking for projects with meaning beyond curiosity alone. Guided by one of his ACS teachers and by an increasingly deep interest in the possibilities of artificial intelligence, his attention turned toward a problem that remains largely invisible in Bulgaria's technology landscape.

This is how the idea for a project aimed at facilitating communication for the deaf community was born.

"I had already been working with computer vision, meaning the recognition of different objects in videos and images. I thought this was a good place to start, to apply the things that interest me to something with real potential," Spas explains.

The first step was the creation of his own image database. Every photograph had to be carefully captured, processed, and formatted so it could be used to train a neural network. Today, the database contains more than 12,000 images taken entirely by Spas and serves as the foundation for a system capable of recognizing individual gestures from the Bulgarian one-handed fingerspelling alphabet and connecting them to written letters and words.

This year, Spas's journey reached another important milestone when he was selected to represent Bulgaria at the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence in Kazakhstan this August. During his time at ACS, he also piloted the ACS Ignite Hackathon through his SIHP project, won the national "I Can Here and Now" competition in Devin, and, as president of the ACS Game Development Club, helped build a vibrant community of young developers and creators.

At the Class of 2026 diploma ceremony last week, Spas also received the Floyd Black Award, honoring students who, through their achievements, personal qualities, and conduct, embody the values the College seeks to cultivate: hard work, honesty, respect, responsibility, and a love of learning.

His story is a reminder that at ACS, education is not simply about mastering knowledge, but about learning to use it with curiosity, creativity, and purpose.