Assoc. Professor Maria Spasova was born in 11 April 1979 in Sofia, Bulgaria. She finished her high school education in Sofia and started her chemical-engineering study at Technical University of Sofia. After graduation from the Technical University, she started her joint PhD between Department of Non-metallic Materials and Constructions, Technical University – Sofia and Laboratory of Bioactive Polymers, Institute of Polymers, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) in 2003.

As part of her PhD studies she focused on constructing the first electrospinning apparatus in Bulgaria allowing fabrication of micro- and nanofibers that are exceptionally long in length, uniform in diameter, and diversified in composition. She is particularly interested in preparation and characterization of nanofibers and nanoparticles from biocompatible and biodegradable polymers for biomedical application. In 2004 she published pioneer work on successful electrospinning of the natural polymer – chitosan. She was awarded with a first prize in the National competition for the award of “Prof. Ivan Shopov”, promoted by the Bulgarian Chemical Society, Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2008. In 2008 she received her PhD degree in technology and processing of plastics and fiberglasses.

In 2009 she became an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Polymers – BAS. Dr. Spasova performed post-doc specialization in the Laboratory of Polymeric and Composite Materials (LPCM), University of Mons, Belgium, in 2008 – 2009 and 2015. Meanwhile she received honorary diploma distinguished PhD-thesis of Dr. M. Spasova as one of the six best theses in the world for the period 2007-2009 in Quadrant Award Event, held in Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, in 2009. In 2011 she won the “Prof. Marin Drinov” Prize of BAS for Young Researchers up to 35 years in the field of the Chemical Sciences. Three years later she was a member of the team awarded for excellent scientific achievements in the Research Field Nanosciences, New Materials and Technologies in the Competition for Excellent Scientific Achievements on the occasion of the 145th Anniversary of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Spasova is a member of editorial board of the journal Textiles and garments science 2016. She has published 29 scientific articles in polymer science and has more than 400 citations. In 2018 she became Associate Professor at the Institute of Polymers – BAS. A major research topic of her scientific work is devoted to synthesis of biodegradable and biocompatible (co)polymers, preparation of novel nanosized and nanostructured polymer materials and particularly of nanofibrous materials by electrospinning and their application in biomedical and agricultural fields.

Assoc. Professor Spasova is married and has two sons: Teodor – 7 yeads old and Martin – 5 years old.