FFplus Success Story Highlights HPC-Driven HR Innovation from Montenegro

The FFplus project has published its first Business Experiment Success Stories, presenting how European SMEs and start-ups are using High-Performance Computing (HPC) to address real business challenges and develop new products and services.

Among the featured examples is GenAI-HPC4WB – Transforming Business Culture and Hiring Through High-Performance Computing, implemented by Recrewty and DigitalSmart. The project used AI, machine learning and HPC to develop language technologies and HR tools adapted to the Western Balkans, with particular focus on Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian.

A key part of the experiment involved training and evaluating advanced language models using the LEONARDO EuroHPC supercomputer at CINECA in Italy. The resulting solutions support tasks such as CV analysis, candidate matching, interview processing and psychometric assessment, while keeping human experts involved in final recruitment decisions.

The published FFplus Success Story highlights the practical business impact of the experiment, including significant reductions in recruitment screening time and the cost of AI-based candidate search.

For NCC Montenegro, this is also an important example of how local companies can benefit from the European HPC ecosystem. Through NCC support, companies can identify relevant funding opportunities, prepare HPC and AI use cases, and access European supercomputing resources for experimentation and development.

Read the full FFplus Success Story: HPC-Driven Human Resources Innovation for the Western Balkans:
https://www.ffplus-project.eu/en/success-stories/hpc-driven-human-resources-innovation-for-the-western-balkans/

Acknowledgements

The GenAI-HPC4WB Business Experiment received funding from the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) under grant agreement No. 101163317. The JU receives support from the Digital Europe Programme.

We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding the project access to the LEONARDO EuroHPC supercomputer, hosted by CINECA, Italy, through a EuroHPC Development Access call.

BSc Thesis: BabyFlow.AI – A Mobile Assistant for Early Parenthood Support

Marija Gardašević successfully defended her BSc thesis, “Application of Artificial Intelligence in the Development of a Mobile Assistant for Early Parenthood Support,” at the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, University of Donja Gorica. Supervised by Prof. Tomo Popović, the thesis resulted in BabyFlow.AI, a functional Flutter-based mobile prototype for recording and reviewing a baby’s daily routines, including sleep, feeding, mood, meals and basic health-related information. The prototype may be considered an early proof of concept for a future digital parenting-support product, subject to further user testing, integration of more advanced analytics and validation in cooperation with relevant professionals.

BSc candidate Marija Gardasevic

ABSTRACT – The thesis presents the development of BabyFlow.AI, a functional mobile application prototype designed to help parents organize and monitor a baby’s daily routine. The application combines modules for sleep, feeding, pumping, mood, meals, calming-noise sessions, vaccination records, growth tracking and relevant health-information resources, while storing user data locally on the device. Basic analytical insights are generated from user entries, and a separate demonstrative Python machine-learning model illustrates a simple data-processing and classification workflow. BabyFlow.AI is not intended for medical, clinical or diagnostic use, but represents a practical proof of concept that could support the future development of privacy-conscious digital services for parents and childcare providers.

BSc Thesis: AI and HPC for Cybersecurity of Connected Vehicles

Anđela Vuković successfully defended her BSc thesis, “Application of AI and HPC Technologies in the Cybersecurity of Connected Vehicles,” at the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, University of Donja Gorica. Supervised by Prof. Tomo Popović, with the support of Arnad Lekić, the thesis combines an analysis of automotive cybersecurity with a practical AI model for detecting anomalies in CAN communication. The developed demonstrator can be regarded as an early proof of concept for potential industrial applications, subject to further testing with real vehicle data and deployment-oriented validation.

BSc candidate Ms Andjela Vukovic

ABSTRACT – This thesis examines the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) in the cybersecurity of connected vehicles. In addition to analysing contemporary cybersecurity risks, communication technologies and protection mechanisms, the thesis presents a practical implementation of an autoencoder model for detecting anomalous CAN messages. The experimental model demonstrated the potential of AI-based anomaly detection, while HPC is considered an important enabler for processing larger datasets, training more advanced models and simulating cyberattack scenarios. Although developed using simulated data, the implementation provides an initial proof of concept that could be extended and validated for use by automotive manufacturers, cybersecurity providers, testing laboratories and fleet operators.

MSc Thesis Defence: Synergy of Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing in Tuberculosis Diagnostics and Education

On June 29, 2026, MSc candidate Nikola Kavarić successfully defended his thesis entitled “Synergy of Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing in Tuberculosis Diagnostics and Education” within the Artificial Intelligence Master’s programme at the University of Donja Gorica. Through its support for the programme, mentoring activities, and development of competencies in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, NCC Montenegro contributes to preparing young researchers to develop interdisciplinary AI solutions for healthcare. The thesis investigates the combination of computer vision and Retrieval-Augmented Generation approaches for detecting signs of tuberculosis and providing educational explanations of medical findings.

Mr. Nikola Kavaric during the defence

ABSTRACT – The aim of this thesis is the development and evaluation of a system that combines computer vision and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models for the automatic detection of signs of tuberculosis in chest X-ray images and the educational explanation of findings. The initial hypothesis was that it is possible to develop a functional prototype capable of recognizing pathological changes in X-ray images and generating informative, literature-grounded responses for users. Within this research, a CNN model for binary classification and YOLO models for the localization of pathological changes were developed and evaluated. The CNN model achieved an accuracy of 97% on the test set, representing a solid and measurable contribution. The YOLO models adequately demonstrated the concept of localization, with certain limitations related to dataset size and class imbalance. In addition to the visual module, a RAG prototype was implemented, utilizing a local medical document base to generate responses to user queries. The integration was implemented at the prototype level, without clinical validation. Based on the obtained results, the hypothesis was partially confirmed — to a significant extent for the CNN classification component within the test dataset used, while the YOLO and RAG components, due to dataset limitations and the absence of expert-verified reference answers, should be treated as proof-of-concept components. The thesis demonstrates that a modular combination of these technologies can serve as a useful foundation for the development of educational tools in the field of medical diagnostics.

MSc Thesis Defence: Machine Learning and AI Model Development for Medical Applications

On June 29, 2026, MSc candidate Anesa Abazović successfully defended her thesis entitled “Machine Learning and AI Model Development for Medical Applications” within the Artificial Intelligence Master’s programme at the University of Donja Gorica. Through its support for the programme, mentoring activities, and development of competencies in artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, NCC Montenegro contributes to preparing young researchers to apply advanced AI methods in medicine and other socially relevant domains. The thesis investigates the application of machine learning and deep learning to medical image analysis and clinical data classification, while also considering the technical, ethical, and practical challenges of integrating AI systems into healthcare.

Ms Anesa Abazovic durign the defence

ABSTRACT – This thesis explores the potential of machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) models in the detection of ovarian cancer and the prediction of pneumonia. In the first part, a YOLO model was used to identify tumor lesions in medical images, while in the second part, XGBoost, Random Forest, and neural network models were applied for the classification of clinical data. Model performance was evaluated using metrics such as precision, recall, accuracy, specificity, F1-score, ROC-AUC, MCC, mAP50, and mAP50-95. The experimental analysis demonstrated that AI models can achieve promising performance in both clinical scenarios, with certain limitations that require further validation. In addition to technical aspects, ethical considerations were also examined, including model interpretability, data privacy, and the integration of AI systems into healthcare information systems. It is concluded that AI can provide significant support to modern diagnostics, with the need for further improvements and clinical validation.

Conference paper at IEEE IT2026 on intepretable ML for diabetes screening

AI-AGE team presented a paper titled “Interpretable ML for Diabetes and Prediabetes Screening Using Self-Reported Health Indicators” by S. Lazic, S. Cakic, I. Rubezic Lukic, N. Popovic, and T. Popovic at the 30. Annual Conferenc on Information Technology IT 2026. This was part of mentoring activities and efforts related to development of young researchers.

Image source AI-AGE

ABSTRACT – Early identification of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and prediabetes enables timely interventions, yet screening often relies on self-reported data rather than laboratory testing. This work compares lightweight Machine Learning (ML) models: Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LightGBM), and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) trained on 21 self-reported indicators from the 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) dataset for three-class classification (no diabetes, prediabetes, diabetes). We propose a screening-oriented evaluation where a probability threshold is selected to achieve a target sensitivity (recall) of 0.80. LightGBM achieves balanced accuracy of 0.52 and precision of 0.33 at the target sensitivity, with 38% of cases flagged. Tree SHapley Additive exPlanations (TreeSHAP) highlight general health status, age category, body mass index (BMI), and hypertension as dominant predictors. A FastAPI web application provides individual risk estimates and instance-level explanations. The pipeline demonstrates feasibility of interpretable, calibrated screening from non-laboratory data.

AI and HPC for Honey Authenticity: PollenTrace at IEEE IT2026

At the IEEE IT2026 conference in Žabljak, researchers from the University of Donja Gorica presented PollenTrace, an innovative project combining Artificial Intelligence and High Performance Computing (HPC) to enhance honey authenticity verification. Traditional pollen analysis (melissopalynology), while reliable, is time-consuming and dependent on expert knowledge. PollenTrace addresses this limitation by developing a large-scale microscopy dataset and an AI-driven detection pipeline capable of automatically identifying pollen grains in honey samples.

The project is building a dataset of over 33,000 high-resolution microscopy images derived from more than 1,100 biological samples collected across Montenegro, enabling the development of robust and scalable AI models. As a proof of concept, a deep learning model based on YOLOv11 was trained on annotated microscopy images, achieving 84% precision and 88% recall, demonstrating strong potential for automated pollen detection and future large-scale deployment.

HPC resources played a key role in enabling efficient model training and handling of high-resolution image datasets, highlighting the importance of national HPC infrastructure—such as that provided through NCC Montenegro -in supporting advanced AI applications in agri-food systems. This is also cross-project collaboration.

PollenTrace represents a step forward toward digital, scalable, and reproducible food authenticity verification, with strong potential to support laboratories, regulatory bodies, and industry in ensuring product quality and consumer trust. PollenTrace is supported as a PoC project by the Innovation Fund of Montenegro.