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
We are excited that NCC Montenegro is going to be a part of EuroCC2 and Castiel2 projects. The EuroHPC JU continues to fund two flagship projects, EuroCC and Castiel, to build a European network of National Competence Centres for HPC, acting as a hub to promote and facilitate HPC uptake and related technologies across a range of industries. The projects were selected following the call DIGITAL-EUROHPC-JU-2022-NCC-01Search for available translations of the preceding link. The main goal of the EuroCC2 is promoting HPC to boost digital skills, jobs and industrial competitiveness in Europe.
EuroHPC JU continues funding EuroCC2 and Castiel2 project
Starting on 1st January 2023, the project EuroCC2 will run for a 3-year period with a total budget of up to €62 million, provided by the Digital Europe Programme and the EuroHPC Participating States. CASTIEL 2 will also run for a 3-year period starting 1st January 2023 and receive up to €3 million funding from the Digital Europe Programme.
EuroCC 2 and Castiel 2 follow on from EuroCC and Castiel, which started on 1 September 2020 and ran for two years. The two projects received funding from Horizon 2020. More info at the EuroCC2 website.
In the period from 15th – 18th of February the 27th international scientific and professional conference “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES 2023” (IEEE IT 2023) will traditionally be hosted in Zabljak. The conference will be held in the organization of: University of Montenegro – Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Donja Gorica – Faculty of Information Systems and Technologies, IT Society Montenegro, University of Belgrade – Faculty of Organizational Sciences, IEEE Association and IEEE Section for Serbia and Montenegro, with full support of the company Cikom from Podgorica. The chairman of the conference is prof. dr Bozo Krstajic from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Montenegro.
IT2023 – click on image to open website
Lectures and round table discussions will be organized at the Conference on trends in the development of information and communication technologies in the world, as well as current events in this field in Montenegro. Special session dedicated to project presentations will include EuroCC2 project – National Competence Centres for HPC, two H2020-MSCA projects TRACEWINDU and ODDEA, H2020 projects NI4OS-Europe and DEMETER, Eureka TRADE, Erasmus DigNest, and others.
The conference will include: a short course for Edge AI in IoT solutions (organzed by ANSO and EuroCC Montenegro), an HPC/AI workshop with applications, a presentation of the European cloud of open science and the results of successful international projects. This year, a student workshop will also be held as part of the DigNEST project, which will focus on IT innovations in the field of health and agriculture. In addition to the above mentioned, the papers that have arrived and refer to topics from these areas will also be presented at the Conference.
Click to watch
All those interested can follow the activities at the Conference online as well, through the video conference access links available on the official website of the Conference (link).
The full title of this new project is “Building scientific and innovation potential to utilize HPC and AI for S3 Smart Specialisation in Montenegro – HPC4S3ME” and it is funded by the IPA II program, call reference EuropeAid/172-351/ID/ACT/ME.
The overall objective of HPC4S3ME project is to contribute to straightening research excellence by building scientific and innovation potential based on the use of high performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI) for applications in industrial domains proposed by the Smart Specialisation Strategy (2019-2024) for Montenegro. The implementation of this project will provide a state-of-the-art environment for young researchers to gain experience in research and development in computer science, more specifically to apply machine learning and deep learning algorithms supported by HPC in order to create innovative information-communication technology solutions for applications in agriculture and food value chain, health and tourism, energy and sustainable environment, namely the priority domains identified by the smart specialisation strategy. This is a two-year project and it starts in Jan 2023.
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.
Sanja Nikolic, representative of HPC NCC Montenegro participated at 3rdEUROCC/CASTIEL global conference, organized with an aim of presenting of main results, key achievements and NCCs successful deliverables within EuroCC1 project phase.
EUROCC/CASTIEL representatives presented key highlights of EUROCC 1 project management with regard to Competence Map building; Training/Mentoring /Twinning activities; Industrial interaction support and Awareness Creation events and actions.
In the second part of the conference NCCs Finland, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Slovenia, Sweden and Turkey presented key achievements and EUROCC1 contributions in their respective working packages and selected project activities. NCC Montenegro presented multiple activities and overall results in the project segment related to HPC/HPDA/AI Trainings and Skills development.
University of Donja Gorica, EuroCC Montenegro (national competence center for supercomputers) and in cooperation with the National Center of Spain (NCC Spain) organize the course “Deep Learning and HPC”. Guest lecturers from renowned institutions such as the University of Cambridge, Universidad de Cantabria and Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, GraphCoreAI and Imperial College London, AI Clearing and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, DeepMind, Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, Max Planck Institute will be involved in the implementation of the training.
During this course students will learn how to implement deep learning models for real situations on their local machines, key mathematical concepts of deep learning, some key concepts about computer vision and natural language processing.
In the second part of the training, students will learn about high-performance computing in the development of deep learning applications, parallel computing using the Python language on multiple CPUs or GPUs, and the pyTorch library for developing deep learning models. The course starts with guest lectures at the end of November so you need to express your interest as soon as possible. The course is followed by students of the Master AI program at UDG, but also by students of other programs who express an interest in it. Lectures are open to academia, industry and the public sector.
Recommended prerequisites for successfully attending lectures are: good knowledge of algorithms and mathematics, knowledge of at least one programming language (Python is preferred), basic knowledge of high-performance computing (HPC), basic knowledge and interest in artificial intelligence, knowledge of the English language.
