Recently the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) bestowed the Bulgarian Principal Human Factors and Medicine (HFM) Panel Principal member Prof. Dr Sc. Yantsislav Yanakiev from the Bulgarian Defence Institute “Prof. Tsvetan Lazarov” two Panel Excellence Awards. Colonel Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nikolai Stoianov – the Bulgarian Principal member in NATO Science and Technology Board presented the awards to Prof. Yanakiev.

The first one is for the mentorship and participation in HFM Research Task Group (RTG) 287 Developing a Culture and Gender Inclusive Model of Military Professionalism. The group was led by Dr. Krystal Hachey from Canada. In addition to Bulgaria and Canada for more NATO and Partners for peace participated in the group France, Great Britain, Sweden and the USA. The RTG explored case studies from different NATO and Partner Nations. The RTG was also able to publish a book with Springer titled “Rethinking Military Professionalism,” which includes the case studies presented here, as well as insights from a wide variety of academics and military experts in the field. Besides, the group developed cooperation outside of the RTG with University of Haifa, Israel, Royal Military College of Canada and University of Bamberg, Germany.

The second Panel Excellence Award is for the participation in NATO STO HFM-278 RTG Preventing and countering radicalisation to violence. The RTG was extremely well led by the Chair Dr. Sarah Knight from Great Britain. Nine NATO and Partnership for Peace nations participated in the group: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden and the USA. RTG members have collaborated to design and develop an ‘Information Repository’ of evidence (literature, data, and tools) on violent extremism. The goal was to design a ‘one stop shop’ to enable different end users (including policy makers, frontline Counter-Terrorism practitioners, researchers) to quickly and easily access good quality (empirical, scientific, evidence-based) materials to help them to understand specific topic areas and to inform their work. The HFM-278 RTG actively sought to maximise the exploitation of this work by actively seeking engagement with Subject Matter Experts and stakeholders. The project was presented at a range of meetings, seminars and conferences (across government and academia), including the NATO Science for Peace ARW, the ‘Early Career Scientist’ segment of the NATO STO Board Meeting, in Bucharest, and the ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ annual conference at the UK’s Defence Academy.

Remark:

The full Technical Report is available at https://scienceconnect.sto.nato.int/files/583981

More information about the Springer book on Rethinking Military Professionalism, available at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-45570-5

Published Report Reference: https://www.sto.nato.int/publications/pages/results.aspx?k=hfm-278&s=Se…