A longstanding Bulgarian-Swiss collaboration in geoscience promotes research and helps finding solutions to the depletion of mineral deposits.
Bulgaria is endowed with a variety of natural mineral resources. Ranking third in copper, fourth in gold and fifth in lignite mining, the country at the Black Sea plays a significant role in Europe’s resource supply. Mining amounts to 5% of Bulgaria’s national GDP and provides approximately 30’000 direct employments. Given the intensive extraction of minerals, addressing the challenge of replenishing Bulgaria’s non-renewable resources becomes more and more important. Studying geological metal enrichment processes is therefore essential to understand the distribution of natural deposits and to explore for future mineral resources. A longstanding cooperation between ETH Zürich and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia makes an important contribution to this: Initially driven by Swiss scientific interest, the collaboration supports capacity building in Bulgarian partner institutions and has led to concrete industrial applications.
It all began in the nineties, when ETH Zürich took a leading role in GEODE, a seed project of the European Science Foundation on Geodynamics and Ore Deposit Evolution in Europe. During the following field studies in the Alpine – Carpathian – Balkan metallogenic belt, a copper-and gold-rich region, a strong scientific network was created between ETH, Sofia University and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The resulting projects were mainly financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and SCOPES, a joint funding programme of SNSF and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to promote cooperation with scientists from Central and Eastern Europe. The aim of SCOPES, so SNSF, is to establish closer links between Switzerland and Central and Eastern European countries and, by doing this, making partner countries more visible in the European Research Area (ERA).
“The cooperation with the Swiss science community is very diverse”, says Irena Peytcheva who is Professor for Geochemistry at the Geological Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She has been involved in the cooperation with Switzerland for more than 20 years. Joint geological research projects have focused on tectonics, magmatism and ore deposition in the transnational metallogenic belt. These topics are inextricably linked to the formation and the geographical distribution of known and potential future deposits. In addition to that, Bulgarian and Swiss geological study programmes at Bachelor, Master and PhD level were coordinated through common workshops, courses and field trips. At this occasion, international participants worked side by side in the same mineral deposits.
Within the SCOPES framework, Bulgarian students were supported with small grants over several months. In addition, 21 Bulgarian PhD students had the opportunity to spend one to three months at ETH in order to generate analytical data. “This gives our students the possibility to work in a different scientific environment and to benefit from the high-quality equipment and infrastructure”, so Irena Peytcheva. Some of the Bulgarian students received a Swiss Federal Excellence Scholarship, enabling them to stay in Switzerland from 12 up to 24 months to carry out extensive geological analysis. One of them is Elitsa Stefanova: In 2006, she spent 18 months at ETH with such a scholarship. “A precious experience – both from a professional and a personal point of view”, so Stefanova, who now works as an Assistant Professor at the Geological Institute at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. “The international and stimulating scientific environment at ETH was very motivating. The scholarship clearly was a decisive step in my career.” At the same time, Stefanova and her Bulgarian supervisors helped SNSF-funded Master and PhD students to complete basic fieldwork in Bulgaria for their research in Switzerland.
The latest SCOPES project was dedicated to the improvement of teaching methods and research approaches. At this occasion, ETH lecturers held courses in Bulgaria, which were opened to the public. “Regular contacts are very important”, so Dr. Albrecht von Quadt from ETH,a coordinator of several SCOPES project generations. “They ensure targeted staff training, capacity building and the establishment of relevant networks.” Joint workshops were also organised and opened to external stakeholders, allowing local exploration and business companies to participate and establish fruitful relations with talented young researchers.
During the last twenty years, the long-term collaborative projects also involved the University of Geneva from the Swiss side as well as other universities from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Armenia and Georgia – all countries, into which the same metal-rich geological belt extends. Today, graduates from the Bulgarian partner institutions are working in the local mineral industry or as independent researchers, with notable mobility across the globe. “With the acquired skills, our graduates actively contribute to the responsible use and supply of mineral resources”, says Christoph Heinrich, Professor at the Institute for Geochemistry and Petrology at ETH. Especially copper is important to lead the way for a renewable, increasingly electricity-based energy usage. Irena Peytcheva agrees: To identify new mineral deposits and exploit them in a more sustainable way, she says, the scientific community has to work more closely with the local mining industry. “Preliminary scientific work is a lot cheaper and less invasive than expensive exploration drilling and ore deposit definition. We focus on showing industry partners the economic benefit of better understanding mineral deposits and their formation.”
In that context, the will of the EU to promote R&I investment throughout all Member States is very much welcomed by both Peytcheva and Stefanova. “Not only roads and infrastructure need funding, but also science and education, since they influence all branches of industry”. Through know-how creation among young scientists like Elitsa Stefanova, the cooperation with ETH also supported the establishment of new laboratory facilities in the region, which are now used by scientists and industry from several countries. Further positive changes in recent years, such as the strengthening of the Bulgarian National Science Fund or the appointment of a prominent Bulgarian politician, Mariya Gabriel, as EU Commissioner for Youth and Innovation (a portfolio covering also research and education) makes Peytcheva and Stefanova optimistic about the future of Bulgarian science.
Both sides call it a true win-win project. On the Bulgarian side, the collaboration has helped advancing geoscience research through capacity building at the Academy of Sciences, says Irena Peytcheva. “At ETH, a multidisciplinary approach is very much valorised – Something we also want to integrate more here.” This means that in order to better understand the formation of deposits, all geological processes – tectonics, magmatism, geochemistry, hydrothermal evolution and mineral precipitation – should be taken into account. “Also, we now work more closely with industry and academia, to explore the mineral wealth of the region and use it in a socially and environmentally responsible way.” On the Swiss side, so Heinrich, scientific interest has been a major driver for establishing relations with geoscience institutions in close and copper-rich Bulgaria. Throughout the years, the project has become crucial to the international success of ETH in basic economic geology, leading to numerous joint publications and prominent research prices.
Irena Peytcheva stresses the mineral sector’s importance for the Bulgarian economy. Young scientists need to make their voice heard. “We must make specific proposals to exploration companies based on our findings. It is time to participate with more self-confidence in the debate on how to make use of the natural resources endowment we are blessed with.”