Dr Eugenia Kovatcheva is Research Policy Director at the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies (ULSIT), Bulgaria, and Co-Head of the UNESCO Chair on ICT in Library Studies, Education and Cultural Heritage. Her background is in mathematics, robotics, computer science and educational technologies, with current research focusing on intelligent IoT systems, AI, cybersecurity and privacy, smart cities and campuses, FIWARE-based data ecosystems, and human-centred digital transformation. She coordinated ExcellCity, an EU NextGenerationEU project (2023–2026) strengthening research and innovation capacity in smart-city technologies, IoT, AI, cybersecurity and FIWARE. Her recent research includes federated transfer learning for energy prediction under data scarcity and privacy constraints, IoT monitoring and control, IoT–FIWARE communication, smart-university architectures, energy-efficient smart campuses, and multi-agent data fusion. Prof. Kovatcheva has participated in more than 80 EU and national projects and authored or co-authored more than 100 papers and 10 books and textbooks. She represents Bulgaria in the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Technical Committee 3: Education and is actively involved in international academic and UNESCO networks.