BSc thesis on prompt engineering

Mr. Veselin Andric defended his BSc thesis titleld “Prompt endineering for LLMs” at the Faculty for information systems and technologies. The devence took place on 2 Oct 2024 and it was done under mentorship of the EuroCC (NCC Montenegro) and HPC4S3ME teams’ members. This was a part of the effort to promote HPC and AI related technologies in the teaching curricula and research activities at UDG.

ABSTRACT – Prompt engineering is one of the primary areas of Natural language processing (NLP). It is a process that involves designing and improving inputs that are given to a language model such as ChatGPT, with a goal of getting wanted results. This dissertation investigates details of prompt engineering, it’s theoretical foundation, methodologies and practical uses in different tasks of NLP.

Mr. Veselin Andric defended his BSc thesis on Prompt Engineering
The provided an overview of NLP, LLMs and prompt techniques

EuroCC success story booklet 2024

The new Success Story Booklet for EuroCC 2024, created in collaboration by CASTIEL and the National Competence Centres (NCCs), is now available online!

The success stories in the EuroCC 2024 booklet span a diverse range of sectors, including:

  • IT and Software
  • Natural Sciences and Aeronautics
  • Environment, Energy, and Agriculture
  • Pharmacy and Medicine
  • Manufacturing and Engineering
  • Finance and Mobility
  • Public and Communication

These stories showcase achievements and innovations across multiple industries, highlighting the wide-reaching impact of EuroCC initiatives.

One of the featured success stories highlights the collaboration between NCC Montenegro and the Montenegrin company Fleka, showcased through the project “Personalized Banking Software Solutions.” This partnership shows how local innovation can create custom ML predictions for the banking sector and personalized financial-tech sector.

Discover inspiring success stories that highlight innovative achievements across Europe.

New academic paper on Montenegro’s HPC ecosystem development

A new academic paper ‘Sizing HPC Opportunities in Montenegro: Market Insights, Best Practices and Use Cases’ has been published in the scientific journal “Entrepreneurial Economy“.

The paper highlights the pivotal role of HPC in addressing critical societal, scientific, and industrial challenges, and explores its growing impact on businesses through data-driven decision-making, workflow optimization or innovative product design. The study underscores the importance of HPC infrastructure, Cloud services, and AI applications in driving digital transformation and enhancing the industry competitiveness of SMEs.
The research also identifies key challenges in Montenegro including a shortage of HPC expertise, low demand for critical HPC performance, and certain concerns related to data security and IPR. Despite these challenges, market research revealed HPC opportunities related to high Cloud adoption, innovative product development and favourable business prospects. The paper also describe activities of the HPC National Competence Centre Montenegro, established through the EuroCC project, related to established HPC and AI related academic programs and training portfolio, and productive industry collaborations, demonstrated through successful use cases in smart agriculture, precise weather forecasting, and FinTech.

By harnessing both national expertise and international supercomputing resources, the NCC Montenegro has effectively integrated HPC technologies into research and business practices, driving technology innovations and smart growth.

Two NCC-supported and AI-related research papers @SymOrg 2024 conference

Representatives from NCC Montenegro in joint efforts with young researchers from UDG, published two scientific papers at the SymOrg 2024 conference, organized by the Faculty of Organizational Science, University of Belgrade, at Zlatibor, Serbia on June 12-14, 2024. The conference, traditionally envisioned as a platform for knowledge innovation and empirical research, bringing together representatives from the scientific and professional community, was themed: ”Unlocking The Hidden Potential Of Organization Through Merging Of Humans And Digitals”, aiming to address the newfound need for balance in the era of AI.

Image source: SymOrg 2024 website

The scientific paper “Detection of Scoliosis” by Elvis Taruh, Enisa Trubljanin, and Dejan Babić explores the application of a deep learning model integrated with a web application to detect scoliosis using x-ray images. Utilizing a dataset of 198 x-ray images from Roboflow, the initial model performance was unsatisfactory, prompting manual annotation of 245 images, which significantly improved the model’s accuracy. YOLOv8, a state-of-the-art object detection algorithm, was used to train two models, demonstrating improved performance with manual annotations. The web application, built with Flask, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing scoliosis detection results. The backend uses MySQL for data storage and management, facilitating efficient image processing, result display, and feedback from doctors. Evaluation metrics indicate that the second model, which underwent refined annotation and augmentation, performed better, avoiding overfitting and demonstrating higher precision. This approach enhances early scoliosis diagnosis and offers a scalable solution for other medical detection challenges, supporting healthcare providers with more accurate diagnostic tools and improving patient care.

Click on image to open SymOrg 2024 proceedings

In the paper “LLM Consistent Character Bias”, the authors Igor Culafic and Tomo Popovic investigate the potential of Large Language Models (LLMs) for character imitation in media, education, and entertainment. Traditionally, LLMs have been used for tasks like web search and programming, but this study focuses on their application in mimicking specific characters from books. Using a dataset created from the Ciaphas Cain anthology of Warhammer 40k, the authors trained models using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) methods. Three models of varying sizes (1.1B, 7B, and 10.7B parameters) were tested, with training conducted on a NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU. The study found that the larger models (7B and 10.7B) performed well in maintaining character consistency, though they occasionally struggled with specific details and displayed unexpected behaviors like excessive emoji usage. The smallest model (1.1B), despite higher LoRA Rank parameters, was less effective and prone to errors such as repetitive responses and long rants. The authors conclude that LLMs can successfully imitate fictional characters given adequate data and training, suggesting future improvements could make them useful in various fields, including education and therapy. These models have the potential to enhance interactive experiences in theme parks, video games, and educational tools by providing authentic character interactions. However, they caution against using these models as replacements for human therapists due to their limitations and tendency for inaccuracies.

Click on image to open SymOrg 2024 proceedings

Both research papers were partly supported by the EuroCC2 project that is funded by the European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (JU) under Grant Agreement No 101101903.

International Conference: Global commodity chains from a risk assessment perspective, BfR, May 2024

FoodHub and NCC Montenegro team attended the “International Conference: Global Commodity Chains from a Risk Assessment Perspective” in Berlin, hosted by German federal institute for Risk Assessment BfR. This conference brought together national and international experts in feed and food chains, digitalization, and consumer health protection. It was a fantastic platform to exchange knowledge on innovative techniques and digital solutions for evaluating risks in global commodity chains. The focus was on integrating data and insights about hazards, exposure, and technologies to enhance risk assessment along feed and food chains.

We proudly presented two abstracts in the poster/software session, as part of FoodDecide project:

  • Andrea Milacic, Amil Orahovac, Luka Filipovic, “Optimizing the Montenegrin Milk Supply Chain: A Data Visualization Approach”
  • Luka Filipovic, Andrea Milacic, Amil Orahovac, Aleksandra Martinovic, “HoneyChain: Enhancing Honey Production Monitoring System”

The 28th international conference of Information Technology 2024 (IEEE IT2024)

In the period from 21st – 24th of February the international scientific and professional conference “INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES 2024” will traditionally be hosted in Žabljak. These 28th years in a row scientific and professional conference is organized with the aim of a comprehensive and multidisciplinary view of current and development trends in the field of information and communication technologies.

The conference will be held in the organization of the 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, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE Association and IEEE Section for Serbia and Montenegro, with full support of the company Čikom from Podgorica.

Click to watch the video announcement (in Montenegrin)

The Conference shall host lectures and round table discussions about development trends in the field of information and communication technologies, as well as actual problems in this field in Montenegro. In agreement with the Organizing Committee of the Conference, interested institutions are invited to organize presentations of their scientific, research, professional, development, and production projects and achievements. Besides mentioned above, papers submitted and reviewed will be presented at the Conference.

We invite all those interested to follow the activities at the Conference online as well, through the video conference access links available on the official website

Learn more at the conference website: https://www.it.ac.me/en/

Click on image to open IT2024 conference website

Scientific paper on forecasting meningitis with machine learning (MEDICON23)

A resarch paper on forecasting meningitis with machine learning written by B. Dobardzic, A. Alibasic, N. Milosevic, B. Malisic and M. Vukotic just appeared in the Proceedings of the Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing (MEDICON) and International Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering (CMBEBIH), September 14–16, 2023, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina—Volume 1: Imaging, Engineering and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcareat the following link.

Abstract – Meningitis is a life-threatening disease that can lead to severe neu-
rological damage and death if not diagnosed and treated in a timely manner.
In this study, the application of machine learning methods to create a predic-
tive model for meningitis diagnosis based on clinical signs, blood, protein, and
other health parameters is explored. Our goal is to determine the most reliable
and accurate method of meningitis prediction. We analyze a sizable dataset of
meningitis patients using cutting-edge classification techniques, such as Support
Vector Machines and Random Forest. Findings have shown that machine learning
techniques can accurately estimate a patient’s risk of meningitis. The importance
of features for meningitis diagnosis is determined by evaluating them, and the
effectiveness of various models is also compared.

Click on image to open the proceedings