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University of Florida Associate Scientist Dimitri Bourilkov, PhD, has been elected a fellow of the American Physical Society for 2021. The fellowship was granted for his advances in data-intensive science and for his foundational contributions to the APS topical group in data science.

The fellowship is granted to no more than .5 percent of the society’s 50,000 memberships each year, making Bourilkov one of a few hundred recognized at this level by their peers in the APS.

Bourilkov’s work combines the study of physics with data science, with an eye turned toward the possible applications of artificial intelligence in his field. He first came into his profession while researching elementary particles for his master’s thesis from Sofia University in Bulgaria. It required state-of-the-art analysis of increasing amounts of data.

“I was always carrying two hats,” Bourilkov said.

His current research involves searching for new physics phenomena by focusing on pairs of muons — heavy cousins of the electrons. This is a key part of an experimental program at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, the highest energy particle smasher in the world.

In data science, Bourilkov is advancing the university’s wide-ranging artificial intelligence initiative through his work on the HiPerGator supercomputer. He’s interested in applying machine learning techniques to different science fields.

While in Switzerland, Bourilkov led measurements that revealed that the Standard Model, a theory describing three of the four known forces in the universe, is valid in new and previously unexplored energy domains. His study of the electron-positron scattering process (named after Indian physicist Homi J. Bhabha) produced the most stringent limit on the size of the electron that has been observed to this day.

Bourilkov received first prizes for scientific-technical research of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Russia) and for experimental nuclear physics of the Institute for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy (INRNE, Bulgaria). He is a recipient of the Internet2 IDEA award.

With a career spanning over 43 years, Bourilkov was thankful for the recognition in receiving the award.

“I feel both honored and humbled by the APS Fellowship,” Bourilkov said. “It is satisfying to see both pillars of your work acknowledged.”