Category: General

This joint session brings together two complementary perspectives on AI accountability: applied AI assessment and certification from Fraunhofer IAIS, and European standardisation from CEN-CENELEC JTC 21. Dr. Maximilian Poretschkin and Dr. Sebastian Hallensleben will explore how the regulatory framework of the EU AI Act translates into technical practice — from testing and certification of AI systems to the development of harmonized standards that guide implementation across Europe.

The webinar highlights the interaction between those who develop the rules and those who must apply them in practice, with particular attention to the implications for SMEs and research institutions working with limited resources.

Date and Time Wednesday, March 18th, 2026 | 16:30 – 17:30 CET Online | Free Registration REGISTRATION: https://forms.office.com/e/j0CUx4dTsM

This webinar is organized by the Slovak National Supercomputing Centre (NCC Slovakia) as part of the EuroCC project (National Competence Centre – NCC Slovakia).

This webinar is organized by the Slovak National Supercomputing Centre (NCC Slovakia) as part of the EuroCC project (National Competence Centre – NCC Slovakia). This session continues the AI Accountability Dialogue Series – “Who Is Responsible for AI in Europe?”, a series exploring how responsibility for artificial intelligence is defined and implemented across ethical, legal, and technical domains.

The webinar will be held in English.

 The EU AI Act establishes a comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence in Europe, but how do its requirements translate into technical reality?

This joint session presents two complementary perspectives on AI accountability. Dr. Maximilian Poretschkin (Fraunhofer IAIS) draws on his experience leading the ZERTIFIZIERTE KI project to discuss the current state of AI assessments — how organizations and AI systems can be evaluated against legal and technical requirements, and what practical certification processes look like today.

Dr. Sebastian Hallensleben (CEN-CENELEC JTC 21) provides the perspective of European standardization, explaining how harmonized standards supporting the AI Act are being developed and how they guide the technical implementation of regulatory requirements.

Together, the speakers explore the interaction between rule-making and practical implementation — and what this means for organisations navigating AI compliance, technical verification, and trust in AI systems.

Dr. Maximilian Poretschkin is Head of Department AI Assurance and Assessment (AAA) at Fraunhofer IAIS in Sankt Augustin, Germany. His work focuses on the testing, evaluation, and certification of trustworthy AI systems. He leads the “ZERTIFIZIERTE KI” project, which develops testing methodologies, assessment tools, and certification approaches for artificial intelligence and transfers the results obtained in AI standardization. With a background in physics and experience in both research and industry consulting, his current work focuses on practical methods for evaluating AI systems, forensic analysis of AI behaviour, and compliance strategies for advanced AI systems such as large language models.

Dr. Sebastian Hallensleben is Chair of the CEN-CENELEC JTC 21 technical committee on Artificial Intelligence and Chief Trust Officer at Resaro Europe. His work focuses on digital trust, AI governance, and the development of harmonized standards supporting the implementation of the EU AI Act across Europe. In addition to his European standardization work, he contributes to international initiatives on AI risk and accountability, including co-chairing the OECD working group on AI risk and accountability. His work focuses on translating ethical and regulatory principles into measurable technical standards for trustworthy AI systems.

Format

• Opening presentation by Dr. Maximilian Poretschkin (15–20 minutes) AI assessment, testing, and certification in practice
• Opening presentation by Dr. Sebastian Hallensleben (15–20 minutes) European standardization framework underpinning the AI Act
• Moderated discussion and audience Q&A (approximately 20–30 minutes)

This webinar is organized by the Slovak National Supercomputing Centre as part of the EuroCC project (National Competence Centre – NCC Slovakia) in cooperation with ThinkParQ.

The webinar will be held in English.

Abstract:

As high-performance computing and artificial intelligence workloads continue to grow in scale and complexity, efficient data access becomes a critical factor for overall system performance. Parallel file systems address this challenge by enabling concurrent access to distributed storage resources, supporting highly parallel and data-intensive applications.

This webinar introduces the fundamental concepts of parallel file systems and their role in modern HPC environments, with a focus on BeeGFS. The session will explain BeeGFS architecture and core components, key design principles, and features supporting performance, scalability, and ease of management. Topics will include data management capabilities introduced in BeeGFS 8, on-demand storage with BeeOND, and an overview of community and enterprise editions.

Real-world reference stories from HPC, AI, and enterprise environments will be discussed to illustrate how BeeGFS is applied in practice. The webinar will conclude with a discussion and Q&A session.

Speakers:

Dominic McKendry
Business Development Director Northern Europe, ThinkParQ GmbH

Dominic McKendry is Business Development Director for Northern Europe at ThinkParQ, the company behind the parallel file system BeeGFS. He works with partners and end users across the HPC, AI, and data-intensive computing landscape, focusing on real-world use cases and adoption of BeeGFS in research and industry.

He brings extensive experience from the enterprise IT and HPC sector, including over 18 years at Dell Technologies, and holds an MBA from Purdue University, with an academic background in international management and business studies.

Ingo Martini
Presales Director BeeGFS, ThinkParQ GmbH

Ingo Martini is a Presales Consultant at ThinkParQ, specializing in BeeGFS and its deployment in HPC, AI, and data-intensive environments. He supports customers and partners with solution design, architecture discussions, and technical positioning of BeeGFS.

He has a strong technical foundation built through long-term work in storage systems and infrastructure engineering, complemented by formal training and certifications, including AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, and a solid engineering-oriented background.

Outline:a:

• Introduction and motivation: data challenges in HPC and AI
• Parallel file systems explained
• BeeGFS architecture and core components
• Why choose BeeGFS: performance, scalability, and ease of use
• Data management capabilities in BeeGFS 8
• BeeOND: on-demand storage for HPC workloads
• Community vs Enterprise (Hive) editions
• Reference stories from HPC, AI, and enterprise environments
• Discussion and Q&A

This webinar is organized by the Slovak National Supercomputing Centre as part of the EuroCC project (National Competence Centre – NCC Slovakia) in cooperation with NCC Portugal within the AI Accountability Dialogue Series.

The webinar will be held in English.

Abstract:

The EU AI Act introduces new roles and obligations that reshape how responsibility for AI systems is distributed inside organisations. In practice, however, AI ownership is often fragmented across legal, technical, compliance, data, and business functions, and further complicated by dependence on third-party and foundation models.

This webinar examines how organisations can address these challenges by distinguishing operational responsibility from operational ownership, and by clarifying decision rights and accountability across the AI system lifecycle. It discusses practical governance mechanisms aligned with organisational size and risk, including internal monitoring, documentation, and traceability of AI systems. Particular attention is given to common deployment challenges such as unclear ownership boundaries, reliance on external providers, and the emergence of informal or “shadow” AI use.

Speaker

Petra Fernandes

Lawyer – Data Protection, Artificial Intelligence & Cybersecurity

Petra Fernandes completed her Law Degree in 2003 and has since been advising clients on legal and governance matters related to data protection, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. She has served as a Data Protection Officer and as part of DPO teams for both private companies and public administrations.

In addition to advisory work, she regularly delivers training and awareness-raising sessions on data protection and AI governance for public and private sector organisations, with a strong focus on practical implementation and compliance.

Topics Include:

• AI ownership versus operational responsibility under the EU AI Act
• Roles and responsibilities of providers, deployers, and internal teams
• Proportional AI governance models for SMEs and large organisations
• Internal monitoring, documentation, and traceability of AI systems
• Managing ownership when using third-party and foundation models
• Addressing challenges such as shadow AI and informal AI use

Outline:

1. Introduction: Why AI ownership is more than a legal issue
2. The different players under the AI Act and their role in AI ownership
3. Provider and Deployer roles and internal organisational responsibility
4. Senior management accountability and decision-making authority
5. Proportional AI governance models
   • Internal monitoring and documentation
   • Mapping AI systems and use cases
   • Embedding responsibility into procurement and development
6. Challenges in real AI deployments
   • Fragmented ownership and unclear decision rights
   • Dependence on third-party and foundation models
   • Shadow AI and evolving systems
7. Key priorities for establishing clear AI ownership
8. Discussion and Q&A

Daniela Vacek works at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS), the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies (KinIT), and the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava. She is a laureate of the ESET Science Award 2025 in the category Outstanding Young Scientist in Slovakia under 35. She is a Slovak philosopher specializing in the ethics of artificial intelligence, responsibility, analytic aesthetics, and philosophical logic. She leads an APVV-funded project entitled Philosophical and Methodological Challenges of Intelligent Technologies (TECHNE).

Jaroslav Kopčan works as a research engineer at the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies (KinIT), where he specializes in natural language processing (NLP) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). His research focuses on automated content analysis and explainability techniques for underrepresented languages. He works on the development of interpretable NLP systems and tools, with an emphasis on knowledge distillation.

Date and Time: Thursday, 12 February 2026 | 10:00 CET

Venue: Online | Free participation 

The lecture will be conducted in English.

Registration

There is an extensive debate on responsibility gaps in artificial intelligence. These gaps correspond to situations of normative misalignment: someone ought to be responsible for what has occurred, yet no one actually is. They are traditionally considered to be rooted in a lack of adequate knowledge of how an artificial intelligence system arrived at its output, as well as in a lack of control over that output. Although many individuals involved in the development, production, deployment, and use of an AI system possess some degree of knowledge and control, none of them has the level of knowledge and control required to bear responsibility for the system’s good or bad outputs. To what extent is this lack of knowledge and control at the level of outputs present in contemporary AI systems?

From a technical perspective, relevant knowledge and control are often limited to the general properties of artificial intelligence systems rather than to specific outputs. Actors typically understand the system’s design, training processes, and overall patterns of behaviour, and they can influence system behaviour through design choices, training methods, and deployment constraints. However, they often lack insight into how a particular output is produced in a specific case and do not have reliable means of intervention at that level.

The lecture will offer several insights into these questions. In addition, we will show that the picture is even more complex. There are different forms of responsibility, each associated with distinct conditions that must be met. Accordingly, some forms of responsibility remain unproblematic even in the case of AI system outputs, while others prove to be more challenging.

The presentation was prepared and delivered jointly, with each member of the team presenting their respective expert section:

• Laurie Farmer vysvetlil technologický koncept ukladania prebytočnej energie do vodíka a jeho význam pre energetické systémy.
• Lucia Malíčková vysvetlila ako bol Farmerov koncept integrovaný do digitálneho dvojčaťa, ktoré umožňuje simuláciu rôznych scenárov, analýzu prevádzky a optimalizáciu energetických cyklov.

Prezentácia demonštrovala:

• the potential of hydrogen as a stabilizing element within the energy infrastructure,
• the possibilities for efficient storage and utilisation of energy surpluses,
• the advantages of linking energy concepts with HPC simulations through the digital twin,
• the practical application of modelling for future energy and industrial solutions.

The event brought a wealth of insightful discussions and confirmed the growing importance of connecting hydrogen technologies with digital solutions. We look forward to further collaboration with partners from the energy, research, and industrial sectors, as well as to new opportunities that will allow us to continue advancing innovative approaches to sustainable energy.

On this occasion, a ceremonial reception was held, bringing together representatives of diplomacy, public institutions, and the scientific community. The event was also attended by Lucia Malíčková, Representative of the National Supercomputing Centre. During the reception, she met with the President of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Mgr. Martin Venhart, DrSc., as well as with His Excellency, the Ambassador of Romania, Calin Fabian.

The meeting with Martin Venhart marked an important step toward strengthening cooperation between the National Supercomputing Centre and the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Both institutions expressed interest in closer collaboration, particularly in the areas of promoting science and technology, supporting research, and preparing joint innovative projects. This cooperation holds significant potential to contribute to the development of the Slovak research and innovation ecosystem and to the integration of high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and academic research.

The event also reaffirmed the importance of international cooperation and the shared ambition to further deepen Slovak–Romanian relations, particularly in the strategically important fields of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.

The reception thus became not only a celebration of Romania’s national heritage, but also an important platform for professional dialogue, networking, and the creation of future partnerships with the potential to deliver concrete benefits for science, innovation, and technological development in both countries.