NCC Montenegro (within the EuroCC2/EuroCC4SEE project), in cooperation with “IT Society”, is organizing the training “HPC and Industrial Cooperation – Opportunities and Perspectives” as part of the activities of the 29th scientific and professional conference Information Technologies – Present and Future, which will be held on 29 and 30 May 2025 in Žabljak.
The aim of this two-day training is to present available high-performance computing (HPC) as an innovative tool for improving business in Montenegrin industry. Through practical examples and discussions, participants will have the opportunity to consider the possibilities of implementing HPC in their companies, identify potential challenges that they can solve, the necessary resources and establish B2B contacts with members of NCC Montenegro.
This will be a contionuation of IT2025 and collaboration of NCC Montenegro and “IT Drustvo” NGO
In collaboration with ICT Cortex, we are organizing a workshop “Innovation through Supercomputing in AI – an opportunity to improve your business”, on the topic of #HighPerformanceComputing and #ArtificialIntelligence technologies, intended for innovative IT companies, #SMEs and startups that want to improve their products, services and business processes using cutting-edge digital solutions.
With the support of experts, participants will learn how to use HPC technologies for accelerated development of AI models, how to access leading European supercomputing resources and how to improve their software solutions with significant time and resource savings.
The workshop is organized as part of the set of training events of the EuroCC2/EuroCC4SEE (Digital Europe) project, and is implemented by the National Competence Center (NCC) Montenegro.
Join us on Wednesday, April 23, from 1:00 PM at the Entrepreneurial Nest, UDG and learn more about #NCC technical support and the benefits that the European supercomputing infrastructure offers to the business and public sectors.
Agenda
INTRODUCTION TO HPC TECHNOLOGIES AND NCC MONTENEGRO
13:00 | NCC Montenegro: Drive Your Innovations with HPC Sanja Nikolić HPC & AI: Turn Your Data into Action HPC/HPDA/AI Training and Service Portfolio HPC4SME: Automated Assessment Tool
13:30 | NCC Montenegro: Gateway to European Supercomputers Luka Filipović EuroHPC: Democratizing Access to Supercomputing Overview of Open Access Calls – How to Apply?
As part of its mission to strengthen high-performance computing (HPC) capacities in Montenegro, the National Competence Center (NCC) in HPC recently visited the local IT company Exploring, a growing SME known for its innovative data-driven solutions. The meeting served as an initial consultation aimed at introducing the EUROCC project, and presenting the range of support services provided by NCC Montenegro.
NCC team visited Exploring, an SME IT developer from Podgorica
During the visit, the NCC Montenegro team provided an overview of the EUROCC initiative and the ongoing efforts to enhance digital innovation through HPC, artificial intelligence (AI), and related technologies. The Exploring team was introduced to the NCC self-assessment survey, a tool designed to help companies evaluate their readiness for adopting HPC technologies. In addition, we identified a potential use case to migrate Exploring’s development processes of ML prediction models for BI, which involve handling large datasets and developing prediction models, to the computing infrastructure managed by NCC Montenegro. This move could significantly improve computing performance and scalability for their internal R&D workflows.
The meeting also explored the possibility of:
Launching a proof-of-concept (PoC) analysis to evaluate the benefits of HPC in a real-world scenario tailored to Exploring’s use case;
Joint participation in upcoming open calls and EU-supported innovation programs;
Establishing a long-term collaboration between Exploring and NCC Montenegro to unlock further innovation potential.
This consultation marks an important step toward bridging the gap between academic HPC expertise and the private sector’s innovation goals. NCC Montenegro looks forward to supporting Exploring in its digital transformation journey.
We concluded this consultations with an action plan for the coming months
Fain Tech, a startup specializing in computer vision, with the support of the NCC Montenegro team, which is implementing the EuroCC2/EuroCC4SEE project, has successfully gained access to Leonardo BOOSTER HPC resources for a period of three months through the EuroHPC Benchmark public call. This access will support research on the Enfield: European Lighthouse to Manifest Trustworthy and Green AI project, aimed at developing advanced models for defect detection on PCBs.
Another SME to utilise European HPC resources
With these resources, the team will focus on optimizing neural networks to create solutions that perform effectively even with limited data, minimizing the risk of overfitting. The team will demonstrate their capability to effectively use advanced computing resources, contributing to the development of reliable and sustainable technologies in industrial processes.
The 13th Research Day, held on April 4, 2025, at the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), once again brought together a vibrant community of researchers, students, and professionals committed to advancing knowledge, innovation, and research.
Organized in collaboration with the Statistical Office of Montenegro – MONSTAT and the Public Opinion Research Agency – DAMAR, the event served as a dynamic platform for sharing ongoing projects and research initiatives. This year’s focus was placed on the strategic use of statistical data, interdisciplinary research approaches, digital tools and data-driven decision-making. The MONSTAT presented in-depth socio-economic analyses based on the latest Census results in Montenegro, while the DAMAR-LAB initiative showcased advanced neuromarketing research potential, using eye-tracking technologies.
Among UDG’s flagship research projects, the EUROCC2/EuroCC4SEE was featured, demonstrating the increasing relevance of HPC and AI technologies for predictive analytics, complex simulations and scenario modelling. A representative of NCC Montenegro highlighted the growing capabilities in HPC/AI-driven research excellence, industry applications, training opportunities, and key findings from the HPC4SME market study.
Events like this strengthen collaboration between academia, industry, and public institutions, laying the foundation for smarter and sustainable ecosystem of research, development, and innovation.
Five Group company has established itself as one of the leading IT companies in Montenegro in the field of 3D design, gaming industry, application of AI/ML in various business areas, for innovative IT solutions in the field of education, military industry, etc. With the support of the NCC team of Montenegro, Five Group company submitted an application for access to HPC resources on the Leonardo supercomputer, within the Benchmark call. As a result of the successful application for the project called “Wasco AI – Custom AI Assistant Optimization via HPC”, access to the Leonard Booster partition for three months, in the amount of 3500 node-hours, was granted.
Successful submission for Benchmark call “Wasco AI”
Wasco AI is an intelligent, customized AI assistant designed for business applications. It supports multimodal interaction (text, video, images, and documents) and provides adaptive support to various industries. Through this project, benchmarking, training optimizations and fine-tuning of large language models (LLM) will be performed to ensure scalable performance, using EuroHPC resources.
After the initial meeting held in December 2024 at the premises of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Montenegro, NCC Montenegro team had several online meetings with representatives of One AI start-up company, in order to provide them support in writing application for access to HPC resources. One AI company has obtained grant from Innovation Fund of Montenegro for their project “AI Heal “, where they are developing a smart-phone application for monitoring different health parameters and obtaining AI advices based on the experiences of doctors across the world. Thus, the project deals with great amount of data which are going to be used for the training of AI Heal model. This cooperation with NCC Montenegro resulted in successful application on Development Call for resources on LUMI supercomputer.
