An official visit of Chinese scientists to the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia

On 30 July 2025, Dr Jie Zhang of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Dr Wenhua Xiong, Executive Director of the International Society of Zoological Sciences (ISZS) visited the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia and met with the museum’s Director Prof. Pavel Stoev, Deputy Director Prof. Stoyan Beshkov, and Deputy Director Assoc. Prof. Tihomir Stefanov, as well as Assoc. Prof. Nedko Nedyalkov, curator of the Palaeontological Museum branch of NMNHS in Asenovgrad, and Assoc. Prof. Dragomir Dimitrov.

Prof Stoev presented the museum’s scientific achievements and the research projects that NMNHS researchers are currently working on. Of those, the guests were particularly drawn to the opportunities for collaborative research of organism diversity in lesser-studied regions of Europe, as well as the digitalisation of scientific collections.

Dr Jie Zhang of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Kai He of Guangzhou University, Prof Baojun Sun of the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Chuanwu Chen of Nanjing Normal University, and Ms Wei Zhang of the International Society of Zoological Sciences (ISZS) also took part via online presentations.

Afterwards, the guests took a tour of the museum’s exhibitions.