From the President
Posted: Tuesday, April 5, 2022Brimkov Named SUNY Distinguished Professor
I’m pleased to inform you that Valentin Brimkov, professor of mathematics, has been appointed Distinguished Professor by the State University of New York Board of Trustees. This honor is bestowed on faculty members who have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within their field through significant contributions to research and scholarship or creative activity.
During his 17 years with Buffalo State College and more than 30 years in higher education, Professor Brimkov has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to academic excellence and student success. Originally from Bulgaria, Dr. Brimkov has elevated scholarship in mathematics, especially in the areas of discrete geometry and combinatorial image analysis. He has edited or co-edited 18 books and published almost 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers that have appeared in international and national journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings.
Dr. Brimkov is also a dedicated teacher who loves involving his students in his research. He has published research papers in leading international journals and conference proceedings with some of his mentees. One of these works, presented at an international conference, won the Best Student Paper award in a competition involving doctoral students and more senior researchers.
Some of his most salient contributions include developing an analytical honeycomb geometry for raster and volume graphics, which received the prestigious Wilkes Award from the British Computer Society; obtaining cutting-edge results on the maximal clique problem on intersection graphs of convex polygons; resolving a long-standing problem about the complexity of discrete volume polyhedrization; and developing a theory of integer programming under the Blum-Shub-Smale real number computation model.
Dr. Brimkov also has a remarkable record of service to the profession. He is a long-term member of the steering committees of two major international conferences—the International Workshop on Combinatorial Image Analysis (IWCIA) and the International Symposium on Computational Modeling of Objects Represented in Images (CompIMAGE). He has played a leading role in the organization of 10 of these conferences, two of which were organized under the auspices of Buffalo State. In recognition of his scientific reputation, he has been invited to serve as a keynote speaker at numerous conferences and symposia in Japan, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, and the Czech Republic. In addition, he has delivered more than 90 presentations at various scientific forums.
Dr. Brimkov is a member of seven editorial boards of highly respected professional journals, including Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence; Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering; Imaging & Visualization; and Reports in Medical Imaging. He has also served as managing guest editor of 12 leading international journals.
In 2009, Dr. Brimkov received the President’s Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, and Creativity; and in 2012, he received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
He will be officially inducted into the SUNY Distinguished Academy at a ceremony in Albany in early June. In the fall, we will honor Dr. Brimkov on campus during our Faculty and Staff Recognition Ceremony. In the meantime, please join me in congratulating Professor Brimkov on this prestigious honor.
