Our friend and colleague Borislav Dimitrov (“Bobo” to his close friends and family), who has died aged 50 after a stroke, was associate professor of medical statistics at the University of Southampton.
Borislav was passionate about clinical research and teaching, and had accomplished much in his academic career. Organised and reliable, he used his clinical knowledge in both applied and biomedical research, and established collaborations with leading clinicians in Southampton, Dublin, Bulgaria, Italy and the US.
He had particular expertise in chronobiology, which examines periodic (cyclic) phenomena in living organisms, so-called biological rhythms; and in prediction models, calculating the risk of people developing a disease or condition, so that the degree of intervention (advice or drug therapy for instance) can be targeted to that risk. He published more than 100 peer-reviewed academic papers in leading international journals and in diverse clinical areas including renal, respiratory, cardiac, neurological and cancer.
Borislav was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria. His mother was a doctor and his father an engineer. Borislav trained in medicine and public health in Bulgaria and then in medical statistics, working from 2000 as a researcher in biostatistics and clinical epidemiology at the Mario Negri institute in Milan and from 2008 as senior health outcomes manager at the Health Research Board Centre for Primary Care Research in Dublin. He joined the faculty of medicine at Southampton University in 2012 as a senior lecturer in medical statistics.
Borislav’s thoughtful advice and expertise were much in demand and he was very generous with his time to junior researchers and medical students alike. He was a warm and engaging colleague who was immensely proud of his Bulgarian heritage and organised an Erasmus exchange programme between Southampton and Trakia University in Stara Zagora, due to take place in May.
He was a noted linguist, fluent in English, Italian, French, Russian and Bulgarian, and interested in travelling and learning about other cultures. He was particularly popular in the Bulgarian communities in Southampton and Dublin, and was an accomplished DJ of Bulgarian folk and western music.
Most of all, Borislav was a dedicated family man, married to Daniela Baramova, and very proud of his stepdaughter, Desi, and son, Mitko. They, and his parents and brother, survive him.
