On March 1, 2023, in the Great Hall of the Federation of Scientific and Technical Unions, the "Outstanding Young Scientist in the Field of Polymers" award for 2023 in the name of Prof. Ivan Shopov was presented for the twentieth year. The award was won by Denitsa Nikolova, PhD student in the Laboratory of Structure and Properties of Polymers, Department of Pharmaceutical and Applied Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Pharmacy, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". The award is individual and is given to a young Bulgarian scientist, under the age of 35, for outstanding research in the field of polymer science, carried out in Bulgaria or partially abroad. The award was presented by Prof. Ivan Shopov himself, and the chairman of the Union of Chemists, Prof. Venko Veshkov, also offered congratulations.

Three young scientists took part in the competition this year, and a special jury evaluated their contributions in the field of polymer science and determined the winner. The other two candidates were Selin Kyuchuk, a chemist in the Polymeric Biomaterials Division of the Institute of Polymers, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Erik Dimitrov, a chemist in the Macromolecular Engineering Division of the Institute of Polymers, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Denitsa Nikolova works on the development of new polymer carriers in the form of soft contact lenses and polymer nanoparticles for biologically active substances with potential application in ophthalmology.