Vassya Bankova - Biography#
Vassya Bankova was born on 22nd October 1954 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her academic career developed as follows: MSc in Organic Synthesis (1977), PhD in Natural product chemistry (1990), Associate Professor of Natural product chemistry, (1996), DSc in Chemistry (2001), Full Professor of Natural product chemistry, Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry (IOCCP), Corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2014).
She has worked as a guest-researcher at the Ruhr University – Bochum (1985-1986). She was the Head of Laboratory Chemistry of Natural Products at the IOCCP-BAS in the period 2009 - 2016.
Her research interests are directed towards search for new biologically active compounds from unexplored biological subjects (endemic plants, mushrooms, bee products); development of modern reliable methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the active components in complex extracts of natural products. Her special interest is devoted to the bee product propolis (bee glue): its chemistry, plant origin, biological activity, health-promoting potential, analysis, standardization.
She was coordinator of the Bulgarian group participating in the FP-7 supported project "Bees in Europe and the decile of bee colonies" (2010 - 2013). She and her group have made major contributions to the current knowledge of propolis and have published over 100 papers in international peer reviewed journals and four book chapters on this topic. Her total number of publications is over 220, cited over 8000 times (SCOPUS), she has an h-index of 46.
She received the Elsevier Award for excellence in global research, in research topics in which Bulgaria has a significant and growing global impact for her studies on propolis, in 2018.
She is a member of the International Honey Commission and founding member of the Bulgarian Phytochemical Society. She is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Sofia and is on the Editorial Boards of several international journals in chemistry.
