National Competence Centre for High-Performance Computing
Thanks to EuroCC2 team from Montenegro, EuroCC and 27th International Scientific and Professional Conference – Information technology IT2023 were featured in the June issue of IEEE Region 8 News magazine (Vol 4 No 2). You can access the full issue at the following link. The News bulletin is published quartterly and distributed to over 80000 IEEE members in Region 8.
Representatives from the NCCs of Montenegro and Cyprus (CaSToRC), held an initial meeting on June 6, 2023, with the primary purpose to explore potential cooperation, knowledge sharing opportunities and best practice exchange through effective peer’s cooperation and Twinning activities.
During the meeting, the NCCs’ teams expressed mutual interest in exchanging experiences and learning opportunities, particularly in the areas of productive industrial cooperation and HPC/AI related training activities. Additionally, they discussed the exchange of operational practices and proven initiatives related to NCC management, cooperation and communication activities.
The next steps involve organizing administrative, logistic and operational support to facilitate team visits and work program with shared topics’ interest. By leveraging NCCs’ respective expertise and synergizing their efforts, both NCCs aim to strengthen their capacities and effectively address HPC+ needs/potential in their national ecosystems.
An information session and workshop was held at the University of Donja Gorica on May 26 starting to promote and clarify the conditions of the Competition for the co-financing of national scientific research projects by the Ministry of Science and Technological Development.
On behalf of the Ministry of Science and Technological Development, Ms. Milena Milonjić, Acting Director General of the Directorate for Scientific Research, Ms. Jelena Šaranović and Ms. Zorana Lakićević-Milutinović addressed the audience and presented the Competition – open call rules and criteria for co-financing national scientific research projects for 2023.
About 40 researchers, professors and associates of the University of Donja Gorica attended the informative and interactive session.
The main goal of this open call is to strengthen the capacity of research teams in Montenegro, in order to encourage excellence, thereby contributing to the development of a society based on knowledge and competitiveness at the international level.
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.
Researchers from UDG and NCC Montenegro published a paper “Machine Learning Models for Statistical Analysis” by M. Grebovic et al. in The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 20, No. 3A, Special Issue 2023. This was a follow up effort on the paper previously presented at the ACIT2023 conference.
ABSTRACT – Compared to traditional statistical models, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms provide the ability to interpret, understand and summarize patterns and regularities in observed data for making predictions in an advanced and more sophisticated way. The main reasons for the advantage of ML methods in making predictions are a small number of significant predictors of the statistical models, which means limited informative capability, and pseudo-correct regular statistical patterns, used without previous understanding of the used data causality. Also, some ML methods, like Artificial Neural Networks, use non-linear algorithms, considering links and associations between parameters. On the other hand, statistical models use one-step-ahead linear processes to improve only short-term prediction accuracy by minimizing a cost function. Although designing an optimal ML model can be a very complex process, it can be used as a potential solution for making improved prediction models compared to statistical ones. However, ML models will not automatically improve prediction accuracy, so it is necessary to evaluate and analyze several statistical and ML methods, including some artificial neural networks, through accuracy measures for prediction purposes in various fields of applications. A couple of techniques for improving suggested ML methods and artificial neural networks are proposed to get better accuracy results.
The paper is available at the following link.
University of Donja Gorica presented HPC4S3ME project at our stand at EDCON2023 conference fair. Our researchers had an opportunity to talk to visitors and conference attendees. There was between 1500 and 2000 attendees today at VOCO complex in Podgorica Montenegro. More details on HPC4S3ME website at the following link.
EDCON (Community Ethereum Development Conference ) is a non-profit annual global Ethereum conference that happens once a year in different countries (EDCON 2017 in Paris, 2018 in Toronto, 2019 in Sydney, 2020-2021 Online, 2022 in San Francisco at Chase Center). It is mainly committed to serving the Ethereum ecosystem in boosting the communication and interaction of Ethereum communities worldwide. Link: https://www.edcon.io/
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/
