EuroCC has published their first booklet edition of Success Stories for 2023! The booklet contains a summary of successful experiments that have been conducted within the EuroCC projects with some of them using EuroHPC Joint Undertaking supercomputers Each success story includes its challenges, solutions, business impacts and benefits. Discover more on the newly published booklet! Project AIMHiGH, a HPC/AI use case for computer vision solutions in agri-food sector, was featured in this first bulletin. The booklet is available at the following link.
Project AIMHIGH featured in the Success Story bulletin
Montenegro welcomed one of the biggest gatherings in the cryptocurrency world and blockchain technologies – EDCON (Community Ethereum Development Conference) bringing founders, developers, researchers, industry leaders, investors and innovators together to discuss the recent developments, emerging trends and overall potential of Etherium-based solutions, blockchain ecosystem, decentralised technologies and digital economy.
During a five-day event, co-organised by UDG, (https://www.edcon.io) visitors from all over the world had an opportunity to listen inspirational speakers, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, to attend panel discussion, interactive workshops and exhibition stands, as well as to experience multiple networking and collaboration opportunities.
NCC team members effectively showcased the EUROCC2 project at the UDG exhibition booth, and also highlighted its significance in the opening speech at the EDCON conference. Multiple high-tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and innovative companies’ representatives had an opportunity to understand better how NCC Montenegro, powered by of EUROCC2, brings innovative supercomputing technologies and applications to Montenegro. Visitors were captivated by HPC+ benefits and opportunities, briefly introduced to EuroCC2 project and express further interest in MNE success stories and industry onboarding process.
Representatives of NCC Montenegro and NCC Macedonia had a joint introductory meeting organized by – Centre of Excellence for Computational Biomolecular Research from Sweden, on 18th of May 2023. BioExcel has been developing/using state-of-computational and software tools and modelling techniques since 2015, to address some of the biggest scientific challenges in the area of bimolecular research.
Research in the BioExcel focuses on structural and functional studies of the main building blocks of living organisms – proteins, DNA, membranes, solvents and small molecules such as drug components. BioExcel CoE’s activities support researcher work in core disciplines in the computational sciences such as: Integrative structural biology, Biomarkers design, Nanotechnology and materials science, Personalized medicine, Physiology, Neuroinformatics, Multi-scale QM/MM modelling.
BioExcel Ambassadors’ Program was also presented, as an attractive opportunity for the NCCs and local academic or government institutions, working in the field of computational bimolecular modelling and simulations and duly interested in collaborative research, trainings and outreach activities.
In the scope of elaborated CoE-NCC cooperation and joint efforts on HPC use in the respective domains, NCC Montenegro shortly presented its current activities and potentially interested partners in the area of bimolecular research. BioExcel emphasized its widely acknowledged software tools and training events, including its upcoming, annual flagship BioExcel Summer School (September 2023, Sardinia, Italy), which provides a comprehensive combination of lectures and tutorial sessions on bimolecular modelling and simulations, using modern applications and tools including GROMACS, HADDOCK, PMX. Registration and information: https://bioexcel.eu/events/bioexcel-summer-school-on-biomolecular-simulations-2023/
University of Donja Gorica took part in the Enterprise Europe Network workshop called WB++ Networking Event. The topic of the event was “Digitalization in Agri-Food. The main participants were teams and SMEs active in the field of IT from the region as presenters, and the target audience was interest groups including public entities, companies, research groups, individuals, etc. UDG presented the EUROCC and EUROCC2 projects and discussed success stories and efforts to support digitalisation and the use of HPC/AI in agri-food sector.
WB++ Networking Event (Western Balkans) by EENT. Popovic presented several project implemented at UDG relevant to Agri-food sector
The WB++ event is a joint initiative of partners from the countries of the Western Balkans (+Slovenia +Croatia) with the aim of connecting companies and strengthening partnerships and connections in the region. There was over 40 attendees at the networking event. The Enterprise Europe Network consists of almost 600 partner organizations and institutions, provides excellent contacts and links in 54 countries and connects over 3,000 experts in different fields at the local and international level. Through the FINNO platform, free consulting services are offered for sources of financing for innovation, business internationalization and business growth.
We discussed resutls of EuroCC and plans for EuroCC2 (focus on PoC)There was around 50 attendees at the event
Researchers from the AIMHiGH team published a scientific paper in MDPI journal Sensors, This article belongs to the “Special Issue Novel Architectures and Applications for Artificial Intelligent and Internet of Things Ecosystems” (link). The paper “Developing Edge AI Computer Vision for Smart Poultry Farms Using Deep Learning and HPC” by S. Cakic, T. Popovic, S. Krco, D. Nedic, D. Babic, and I. Jovovic reports on the approach, experiences, and results of using HPC and AI to develop advanced Edge AI computer vision solutions for smart agriculture systems. AIMHiGH project is implemented as an experiment done in the context of FF4EuroHPC project. FF4EuroHPC is a European initiative that helps facilitate access to all high-performance computing-related technologies for SMEs and thus increases the innovation potential of European industry. Whether it is running high-resolution simulations, doing large-scale data analyses, or incorporating AI applications into SMEs’ workflows, FF4EuroHPC connects business with cutting-edge technologies. Learn more at: link.
ABSTRACT – This research describes the use of high-performance computing (HPC) and deep learning to create prediction models that could be deployed on edge AI devices equipped with camera and installed in poultry farms. The main idea is to leverage an existing IoT farming platform and use HPC offline to run deep learning to train the models for object detection and object segmentation, where the objects are chickens in images taken on farm. The models can be ported from HPC to edge AI devices to create a new type of computer vision kit to enhance the existing digital poultry farm platform. Such new sensors enable implementing functions such as counting chickens, detection of dead chickens, and even assessing their weight or detecting uneven growth. These functions combined with the monitoring of environmental parameters, could enable early disease detection and improve the decision-making process. The experiment focused on Faster R-CNN architectures and AutoML was used to identify the most suitable architecture for chicken detection and segmentation for the given dataset. For the selected architectures, further hyperparameter optimization was carried out and we achieved the accuracy of AP = 85%, AP50 = 98%, and AP75 = 96% for object detection and AP = 90%, AP50 = 98%, and AP75 = 96% for instance segmentation. These models were installed on edge AI devices and evaluated in the online mode on actual poultry farms. Initial results are promising, but further development of the dataset and improvements in prediction models is needed.
At the panel discussion called “Strategic planning of digitization of higher education in Montenegro in the post-COVID-19 era” in Chamber of Commerce of Montenegro, the project EuroCC2 – National Competence Centers for HPC, which has started with its implementation was presented today.
Dr. Sandra Tinaj presenting the EuroCC2 in the Chamber of Commerce of Montenegro
Representing the University of Donja Gorica and NCC Montenegro, the general manager of UDG Assoc. Dr. Sandra Tinaj, who was one of the panelists, along with representatives of other higher education institutions in Montenegro, addressed the present audience. She pointed out that the EuroCC2 project is of great importance precisely in the field of digitization of higher education, but also invited all interested members of the general public to contact the HPC Montenegro Center in case of providing additional information and support – in order to raise awareness of the importance of this project, but also the opportunities that it can provide to our community in general.
The panel was attended by representatives from industry, academia and public sector
MAIA – Montenegrin AI Association is a Non-Governmental organization, founded in September 2022 with an ambition to bring together the Montenegrin AI community. Our goal is to popularize Artificial Intelligence related research and spread awareness of its importance in our country, but also encourage our society to join the fast wave of AI innovation in the World. Several NCC Montenegro team members are taking part in this initiative. Check MAIA website for more details at the following link.
