Prof. Dr. Milen I. Georgiev is heading both the Department of Plant Cell Biotechnology at CPSBB and Metabolomics Lab at Institute of Microbiology (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences). He has 20 years of experience in natural products field and has published in excess of 200 papers (i.a., Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Molecular Plant, Genome Biology, Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, and Plant Biotechnology Journal, among others). He has delivered 60+ invited lectures in 25 different countries.

His current research focuses on 1) biosynthesis of fine molecules and development of biotech tools for their sustainable mass production, 2) metabolomics and comprehensive metabolite profiling and 3) molecular pharmacology with particular focus on longevity, obesity and photoaging of skin.

Milen is a recipient of Pythagoras award for outstanding scientist by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science (2011, 2015, 2020 and 2024), being the only scientist in Bulgaria to have won four times. Since 2020 he is listed among top 2% in worldwide citation ranking of all scientists and scientific disciplines for five consecutive years.

Milen serves as an Editor, Associate Editor and Editorial Board member of dozen journals in biotechnology and natural products fields, incl. Phytomedicine, Phytochemistry, among others. Serving as a chairman he has established the International Conference on Natural Products Utilization: from Plants to Pharmacy Shelf (ICNPU; www.icnpu2025.com), which had five issues so far.