At the end of November 2025, representatives of NCC Montenegro visited the Verlab Institute and NCC Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo for a two-day working meeting held within the EuroCC4SEE framework. The visit focused on strengthening regional cooperation, supporting twinning and mentoring activities, and expanding joint engagement with academia and industry. The meetings brought together both NCC teams as well as IT industry stakeholders, underscoring the growing importance of SMEs in HPC and AI adoption across the Western Balkans.
Day 1: Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Alignment
The first day centred on aligning the two NCCs on upcoming activities and mapping joint priorities for the next three months. The discussions focused on student engagement, training coordination, and preparation of several regional events.
Key outcomes included:
- NCC BiH participation in the NCC Montenegro Conference (13 December 2025), showcasing HPC/AI proof-of-concepts and project activities.
- Joint planning of workshops and PoC support for companies, combining experiences from Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and building on ongoing collaborations with NCC Poland and NCC Latvia.
- Agreement to co-organise major events in early 2026, including the AI in Medicine event in Montenegro and the Žabljak IT Conference.
- Coordination on joint scientific publications, using existing datasets and aligning research topics across the two centres.
These discussions reaffirmed the value of EuroCC4SEE’s twinning and mentoring model, enabling both NCCs to share practices, strengthen their training pipelines, and streamline outreach to researchers and SMEs.
Day 2: Knowledge Exchange, SME Engagement, and Practical Collaboration
The second day focused on operational collaboration, with a workshop dedicated to industry outreach and experience exchange related to HPC and AI services. NCC Montenegro shared its methodology for working with companies, including how to communicate EuroHPC JU opportunities and guide SMEs through resource applications.
A local IT company that already uses NCC BiH resources joined the discussion. Their participation added a practical industry perspective and resulted in commitments to:
- take part in the AI in Medicine event in Montenegro,
- join the Žabljak IT Conference,
- explore deeper involvement in EuroHPC-supported pilot activities.
The workshop also enabled both NCCs to discuss effective utilisation of local HPC clusters, exchange good practices on scaling AI workloads, and review success factors for EuroHPC JU applications based on real user cases.
Finally, the partners agreed to jointly explore Horizon Europe funding opportunities related to HPC scalability, applied AI, and capacity building—further extending the collaboration beyond EuroCC4SEE.
A Visit That Strengthened Regional Ties
The meetings in Sarajevo were assessed as highly productive, resulting in clear commitments, strengthened operational cooperation, and a shared plan for the months ahead. By combining training coordination, SME engagement, research collaboration, and strategic event planning, NCC Montenegro and NCC Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to build a more connected and capable regional HPC and AI ecosystem—fully aligned with the mission of EuroCC4SEE.