(October 2011) 

Andrea Kulakov finished the secondary school in 1990, at age of 16, as he managed twice to take two school years during one year (7^th and 8^th grade in primary school and then 3^rd and 4^th year in high school). After that, he enrolled at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Skopje, Macedonia at the Computer Science Department and in 1995 graduated with the highest average grade (9.91 out of 10.00) in the generation 1990-95.

In 1995 he started his postgraduate studies in Cognitive Science at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria, in a small international group of students with classes in English. He finished these studies with an excellent average grade (5.71 out of 6.00). In July 1998 he defended his MSc thesis “Vygovorotsky – An Anticipative and Analogy-making Actor” with an excellent grade (5.5), in front of an international defense committee with 5 members (not including the mentor). In 1999 his MSc diploma was recognized as an equivalent diploma at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Skopje.

During his 9 months military service in 1999, he was also a demonstrator at the Military Academy for the course “Informatics”. After that he worked for six months in an international software company Mak-System, during which period he was for training in Paris, France for 6 weeks.

In the period April 2000 till September 2011, Andrea Kulakov was employed at the Institute of Computer Science and Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (later Faculty of Electrical Engineering and IT) in Skopje, first as an assistant, and then since 2007 as an Assistant Professor. He had taught several subjects in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Databases in the undergraduate and graduate studies.

In June 2005, he won a Graduate Student Research Grant for researches leading to PhD defense, from the Computational Intelligence Society of the largest society of engineers IEEE. (http://ieee-cis.org/edu/research/ little below, in the section for 2005).

In December 2006 he defended his PhD thesis titled “Data Management in Wireless Sensor Networks” at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and IT in  Skopje.

He was a researcher and principal investigator of several national and international projects, financed by the Ministry of Education and Science of Macedonia, from the EU TEMPUS program and from the EU FP6 program.

In 2008 he founded an advanced technology Company for Research and Development NI TEKNA – Intelligent Technologies (www.ni-tekna.com), dealing with development of advanced solutions where it is necessary to apply the techniques of Artificial Intelligence.

In March 2011 he was one of the founders of the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering in Skopje. In August 2011 he was elected as a Head of the Institute of Intelligent Systems at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering.

He is responsible for several courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level from the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Data Analysis, Robotics and Sensing. He has published more than 60 scientific papers at international conferences, in international journals, as well as a book chapter. His research is focused in the fields of Robotics, Business Intelligence, Image and Sound Processing and other subfields of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. Besides his native Macedonian, he speaks fluently English, Serbian and Bulgarian, while he uses also German, French, Russian and Slovenian.

Emil Stankov was born on September 7, 1982, in Skopje. He finished his primary school education in PS "Gjorgjija Pulevski", and his high school education in NHS "Rade Jovchevski - Korchagin" in Skopje, with excellent success. In 2001 he began his studies in informatics, at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (FNSM), University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius", in Skopje. He finished the studies in 2007, by defending his diploma thesis titled "Ontology and a methodology for its development". In 2008 he began his master studies in informatics at FNSM, in the area of Artificial intelligent systems, and in 2011 he continued his education at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE), University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius", in Skopje. He finished the studies in 2013, by defending his master thesis titled "Estimating performance of program source codes using data mining methods", gaining a master's degree in informatics. Currently he is a PhD student at the FCSE.

Starting with the winter semester of 2004/2005, he worked as a teaching lab assistant at the Institute of Informatics (II), FNSM, for 4 subsequent years.  In December 2008 he was hired as a teaching/research assistant at II. Since then, he has been teaching the following courses: Informatics (basic course for students at the Faculty of Philosophy – Institute of Sociology and Institute of Social work and politics), Basics of Programming, Object and Visual Programming, Structural Programming, Concepts for Software Development, Advanced Software Development, Computer Practicum – programming language (course for students at the Institute of Mathematics, FNSM), Distributed Operating Systems, Numerical Methods, Mathematics 1, Mathematics 2, Mathematical Methods for Computer Science Students, Discrete Mathematics 2, Intelligent Systems Basics, Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Microprocessors and Microcontrollers, and Modern Computer Systems. For educational purposes, he has prepared several lab tutorials.

He is a member of the Executive Board of the Computer Society of Macedonia and actively participates in the organization and realization of the national competitions in informatics for high school and primary school students. Also, he was a leader of the Macedonian team at several international competitions and Olympiads in informatics. He participated in the realization of the "Edubuntu" project of the Macedonian government, for modernization of the high school education. He participated at several domestic and international conferences with paper presentations, as well as in several workshops and schools.

Роден е 1955 година во Скопје. Дипломирал на Електротехничкиот факултет во Скопје во 1980 година, а магистрирал на Електротехничкиот факултет во Белград во 1988 година. Докторирал на универзитетот “Св. Кирил и Методиј” во Скопје во 1989 година. На Електротехничкиот факултет во Скопје бил вработен во период од 1986 година до 1998 година во звањата: асистент (1986), доцент (1990) и вонреден професор (1995). На Институтот за компјутерска техника и информатика при Електротехничкиот факултет (кој во меѓувреме го промени називот во Факултет за електротехника и информациски технологии) е повторно вработен од 2007 година во звањето редовен професор. Во периодот 01.01.1992 – 01.06.1993 престојувал на Универзитетот на Калифорнија, Беркли. Од 1998 година е вработен на Универзитетот на Калифонија Сан Диего, прво во звањето вонреден истражувач, а од 2000 година во научното звање истражувач (еквивалентно на редовен професор). Редовен член на МАНУ е од 2007 година. Автор е на повеќе од 100 научни статии публикувани во повеќе од 20 различни списанија, од кои 22 статии се публикувани во IEEE списанија. Неговите трудови, според Science Citation Index, до 2009 година се цитирани повеќе од 4000 пати. Бил едитор на 3 книги, едитор во списанието IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (во периодите 2002 – 2004 и 2006 – 2008), а од 2007 година е едитор во списанието Journal of the Franklin Institute. Автор е на 6 патенти одобрени во EU и USA. Бил раководител на повеќе проекти, а во 2009 година е раководител (ко-раководител) на 4 проекти финансирани од Р Македонија (фондот на МАНУ), Европска унија (FP6), САД (National Science Foundation) и Кина (Honk Kong Research Grant Council). Избран е за fellow на IEEE во 2006 година. Области на научен интерес му се: нелинеарни електрични кола и системи, динамички системи, компјутерски мрежи, комплексни мрежи, кодирање, криптографија, биоинформатика и пресметувачка биологија.