The Department of "Management and Business Information Systems" (MBIS) participates in the realization of the University's mission for the broad-profile training of specialists with interdisciplinary skills. It was established on 25.09.2019 by a decision of the Academic Council of the Technical University - Sofia. The MBIS Department is thematically organized around the eponymous specialization, which enjoys growing interest from users and specific IT competencies of many lecturers from the former Department of III. Therefore, the new department includes lecturers from the existing Department of "Economics, Industrial Engineering and Management". Thus, a new third structural unit is formed within the ranks of the Faculty of Economics. The MBIS Department is an innovative and fresh addition to the composition of the Faculty of Economics, responding to the growing needs of the business sector for highly qualified personnel in the field of IT management, business information and heterogeneous intelligent systems, etc. Thus, at the right moment, it manages to fill the huge market niche for specialized training of high-quality interdisciplinary personnel who possess both modern managerial skills and the ability to timely acquire emerging technological innovations for flexible digital transformation of business. The department is one of the most dynamically developing ones, with a young, enthusiastic academic staff with fresh ideas for integrating the latest achievements in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning, smart devices in shared environments with their diverse intelligent business manifestations for extracting knowledge from large information arrays, multimedia simulation tools, augmented reality, etc.  

The head of the newly established department from 01.10.2019 to 22.08.2020 was Prof. Dr. Svetoslav Velev. After that, the leadership of the MBIS Department was taken over by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rumyana Ilieva, who is one of the creators (2016) and the person responsible for the eponymous specialization since 2017. 

The members of the collegium have specialized at leading European universities. They maintain close cooperation with business by conducting serious scientific research and publishing activities in world-renowned indexed and refereed journals. 

The activities of the MBIS Department are focused on the following main areas: 

• improving the level of teaching in IT management and business information disciplines to the highest world standards, with a view to the professional realization of graduates of the Technical University and the development of their leadership potential; 

• forming values, attitudes, and personal strategies for continuous self-improvement and development of students' creative abilities, which should be adequate to the dynamic conditions for professional realization; 

• raising the quality of research activities and full participation in the scientific life of the country, which contributes to establishing the Technical University as a leading educational and cultural institution in the Republic of Bulgaria. 

Historical Retrospective of the Department of MBIS 

The establishment of the Department of MBIS was a natural continuation of the new bachelor's program of the same name, which proved to be an exceptionally successful product, filling a market niche with no analog in the Bulgarian reality up to that point. 

The bachelor's program in MBIS was created as a result of serious research into global experience during the period 2015-2016 by a small team under the auspices of the then Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business, Prof. M. Velev. The main key figures in the team were the only IT discipline lecturers at the Faculty of Economics and Business - Assoc. Prof. R. Ilieva and Assoc. Prof. O. Marinov, both from the Department of IIMM at that time. The need for this program arose from the requirement to find a sufficiently successful new product to fill the gap created by the temporary freezing of the PA program. Assoc. Prof. R. Ilieva, thanks to her international contact network, secured access to thematically similar curricula and programs from leading world universities and developed, in a progressive logical sequence, the chains of academic disciplines in 6 main thematic areas, proposing thematically and developing the content of a large part of the IT management disciplines in the upper courses, i.e., in the advanced second part of the respective chain. Assoc. Prof. O. Marinov, on the other hand, developed some basic business IT curricula in the first part for the initial courses and conducted serious debates and lobbying to study and improve attitudes within the university, thanks to his contacts at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, which allowed him to secure suitable lecturers for the main ICT disciplines in the respective chains. Assoc. Prof. R. Ilieva was appointed as the coordinator of the program. 

The program attracted unprecedented interest upon its launch, which has been growing every year since the first graduating class in 2017, maintaining a very high admission score. The high-quality training and the broad contact network of the department with the business sector ensure internship and job opportunities for students already in their second year at leading ICT companies. 

Thus, at the end of 2019, in response to the need to establish a third department at the Faculty of Economics and Business, which until then managed the program and the growing number of students enrolled in it, the Department of MBIS was created from lecturers of the Department of IIMM with prominent IT expertise. Prof. S. Dimkov, the most senior lecturer, was appointed as the head of the department, and after his retirement in mid-2020, Assoc. Prof. R. Ilieva was elected as the head of the department, continuing to lead the department to this day, having been elected for a second term. 

In 2020, at the end of the first graduating class, Prof. Dr. K. Angelov, then Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Electronics (FEEE), initiated the creation of a master's program with the same name, in response to inquiries from students who wished to continue their development in this field. The master's program was developed by the department's senior professors: Prof. K. Angelov, Assoc. Prof. R. Ilieva, and Assoc. Prof. O. Marinov, across three specialized directions, with each taking charge of managing their respective area. It was developed for both full-time and part-time study modes, as well as in English, and already has a significant number of foreign students who have graduated from the full-time, part-time, and English-language tracks. Once again, this program has attracted unprecedented interest since its inception, which has been growing each year since the first graduating class in 2020, attracting students who have completed their bachelor's degrees primarily from the Faculty of Computer Science and Technology (FCST) and the Faculty of Telecommunications (FTC), working in the ICT sector, as well as from other universities and abroad. 

To complete the cycle of all educational levels, Prof. K. Angelov initiated the creation of a doctoral program with the same name in 2021, which is now a reality, accredited by the National Accreditation Agency (NAA), and the admission of doctoral students is scheduled for the following year. 

The teaching staff of the cadre is small but consists of internationally recognized scholars with extensive publication and scientific activity. Since 2016, Prof. K. Angelov has been the Dean of FEEE, and previously, since 2010, he served as Deputy Dean. Since 2020, Assoc. Prof. O. Marinov has been the Deputy Dean for Scientific and Applied Activities of the Faculty, currently in his second term.