Category: General

We Participated in the High-Level Summit on AI in Bratislava

We participated in the prestigious High-Level Summit on AI – BratislavAI Forum 2025, one of the most significant current European contributions to shaping the global architecture of AI governance. Lucia Malíčková represented our expertise in artificial intelligence, data ecosystems, and digital innovation.

The BratislavAI Forum is taking place during a period of profound global transformation. The rapid development of artificial intelligence and digital technologies is reshaping economies, industries, education, science, and everyday life. Yet despite the immense opportunities, one essential question stands before us: Are we, as a society, truly prepared for these changes?

The event builds on the AI Action Summit in Paris (February 2025) and paves the way for the High-Level Global AI Conference in India (2026). In doing so, the Slovak Republic positions itself among the active partners contributing to the development of a unified, responsible, and secure global AI ecosystem.

The summit emphasized the need to connect technological progress with the development of human capabilities, critical thinking, and inclusive approaches. The discussions brought together insights from senior government officials, international organizations, technology leaders, and digital regulation experts.

One of the key themes was the fact that the world still lacks a unified framework for the regulation and governance of artificial intelligence. This gap results in fragmented policies, inconsistent development standards, and increased risks of misuse.

The discussions focused on the implementation of:

• UN Global Digital Compact,
• OECD AI Principles,
• UNESCO Recommendation on AI,
• as well as other multilateral initiatives aimed at strengthening digital trust, security, and accountability.

It was highlighted that only a coordinated international approach can fully unlock the potential of AI in a way that benefits everyone—regardless of geography or socio-economic conditions.

The second main thematic area focused on the economic impacts of artificial intelligence. Experts from central banks, the technology sector, and the legal field discussed how AI is transforming:

• productivity,
• the labor market,
• investment flows,
• regulation and public policy,
• and the trust between citizens, the state, and technologies.

The aim was to identify the right balance between innovation and the protection of public interest, while creating an environment that supports inclusive economic growth.

The participation of Lucia Malíčková strengthened our position in discussions on digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and the safe use of data. Her contributions reaffirmed our commitment to actively shaping modern AI ecosystems and supporting international cooperation in this field.

The High-Level Summit on AI in Bratislava enabled us to build new partnerships, share our expertise, and contribute to the discussion on what responsible, secure, and inclusive AI development should look like in Europe and globally.

NCC Slovakia on Business Mission in Portugal During the State Visit of the Slovak President

On 26–27 November 2025, the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC Slovakia) took part in a business mission to Portugal held on the occasion of the state visit of the President of the Slovak Republic, Peter Pellegrini. Božidara Pellegrini took part in the mission on behalf of NSCC and also served as the representative of the National Competence Centre for HPC (NCC Slovakia) – the NSCC division responsible for the EuroCC project and for facilitating access of Slovak stakeholders to EuroHPC JU supercomputing resources. The delegation consisted of nearly 20 innovative Slovak companies and institutions active in the fields of digital solutions, information technologies, smart cities, and energy.

In their opening remarks, the Presidents of Portugal and Slovakia highlighted the shared commitment of both countries to innovation, education, and human capital – values that form a natural foundation for strengthening technological cooperation.

Exploring Portugal’s Innovation Ecosystem

The first day of the mission was dedicated to visiting three key innovation hubs in Lisbon. The delegation began at AI Hub by Unicorn Factory Lisboa, a centre supporting startups developing solutions in the field of artificial intelligence. This was followed by a tour of Unicorn Factory Lisboa – Beato Innovation District, one of Europe’s largest technology campuses. In the afternoon, the delegation visited Taguspark, home to more than 160 technology and research companies. These visits provided Slovak participants with valuable opportunities for networking and deepening the technological dialogue.

Slovak–Portuguese Business Forum

The second day centred on the Slovak–Portuguese Business Forum “Green & Smart Futures”, held at Unicorn Factory Lisboa. The forum was opened by the Presidents of both countries, who emphasised the importance of “building bridges of innovation between the Atlantic and the heart of Europe.” The programme included presentations on the investment environment, contributions from SARIO and AICEP, signing of cooperation memoranda, and, above all, intensive B2B meetings during which companies identified technological synergies and discussed potential future collaborations.

Linking the Mission to the Role of NCC Slovakia

The participation of NCC Slovakia confirmed the growing interest of Slovak companies in solutions based on artificial intelligence, simulations, and work with large datasets – areas that naturally require high-performance computing resources.

Discussions during the B2B meetings showed that an increasing number of companies encounter infrastructure limits when developing AI models or processing large-scale data. NCC Slovakia helps them identify where HPC can deliver the greatest added value and guides them in designing projects that can effectively leverage advanced computational resources.

Within the EuroCC project, NCC Slovakia also provides educational support through free courses and expert webinars, and enables Slovak companies, universities, and research organisations to gain access to European supercomputing capacities via EuroHPC JU access calls. In this way, NCC Slovakia remains a key partner for Slovak innovation and research, helping transform technological ambitions into concrete projects powered by modern HPC resources.

Invitation to the Online Lecture: Building Europe’s Sovereign AI – The Bielik.AI Case

We invite you to join the online lecture “Building Europe’s Sovereign AI – The Bielik.AI Case”, taking place on 11 December 2025 at 10:00. The event is open to experts, practitioners, and anyone interested in artificial intelligence, European technological sovereignty, and open-source AI initiatives.

Europe can build sovereign artificial intelligence without isolation—by ensuring control, portability, and auditability across compute infrastructure, data, models, and deployment.

A compelling example is Bielik.AI, an open, community-driven family of AI models developed in Poland. Within just 18 months, nine models have been released, focusing on EU languages and embedding safety and transparency through features such as Bielik Guard. The lecture will illustrate practical steps toward a credible European path to AI sovereignty.

Katarzyna Z. Staroslawska
AI and HPC specialist engaged in European-scale initiatives in the fields of artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and AI governance

11. december 2025
10:00
Online (link will be sent to registered participants!

Registration

How Projects Addressing AI in Industry Are Created 2025

Artificial intelligence is becoming an integral part of European industry and research, fundamentally transforming how innovative projects are created. In response, the European Commission is introducing two new AI strategies—one focused on the application of artificial intelligence in key industrial sectors, and the other dedicated to the scientific use of AI. These initiatives bring new investment and project opportunities for Slovak institutions and companies, particularly through the Horizon Europe programme.

On this occasion, the National Horizon Office invites you to the webinar “How Projects Addressing AI in Industry Are Created 2025,” which will take place online on 25 November 2025 from 13:00 to 14:30. The event is intended for representatives of companies, research organisations, universities, clusters, innovation centres, and all those planning to submit project proposals incorporating elements of artificial intelligence in the fields of industry and digitalisation.

During the webinar, participants will learn about the upcoming 2026–2027 Work Programme for Cluster 4 (Industry and Digitalisation), including thematic areas and “destinations” under which the new calls will fall. They will also gain an overview of how to effectively integrate the use of artificial intelligence into industry-oriented project proposals in order to better meet the expectations of the European Commission.

A special part of the event will be an interactive panel discussion with industry experts, who will share their experience with preparing and implementing projects under the Horizon Europe programme. Among the panelists will also be our project manager, Lucia Malíčková (NSCC Slovakia), who will explain how projects focused on AI in industrial environments are developed and how to effectively integrate the capacities of the Slovak supercomputing centre into them.

The webinar offers a unique opportunity to understand new trends in the field of AI, gain insight into upcoming opportunities within the Horizon Europe programme, and ask anything you are interested in—from the initial project idea to consortium building and proposal preparation.

More info and registration

Online Lecture: HPC & AI – Competition or Collaboration?

On 26 November 2025 at 10:00, we are hosting a special online lecture dedicated to the rapidly evolving topic of the interplay between high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). Our guest will be Erwin Laure, one of the most prominent figures in the European HPC ecosystem.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, 26 November 2025 | 10:00 CEST
Online | Free Registration

REGISTRATION

Erwin Laure serves as the Director of the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility (MPCDF) within the Max Planck Society in Garching near Munich. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich. He has extensive experience in high-performance computing (HPC), scientific simulations, and data infrastructures, and in recent years has been deeply involved in artificial intelligence and its applications in research. Under his leadership, MPCDF supports dozens of research institutes and is considered one of Europe’s leading centers for scientific computing.

The webinar will be held in English.

Lecture topic: HPC & AI – Competition or Collaboration
The growing influence of generative artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the way scientists work with data, model complex phenomena, and develop scientific predictions. AI is no longer merely a tool for image analysis—it is increasingly entering domains traditionally dominated by classical HPC simulations. The lecture will explore whether AI can replace simulations in certain cases, what advantages arise from combining both approaches, and how these trends are shaping scientific research.

You can expect an overview of real-world AI applications within the Max Planck Society, examples of successful AI deployment across various scientific domains, and a discussion on how rapidly the role of AI is changing within the international research landscape. The lecture will also address the significant technological shifts that AI is bringing to the hardware sector. Chip manufacturers are increasingly prioritizing low-precision architectures optimized for training AI models, a trend that has long-term implications for the availability and development of HPC technologies.

Generative AI has become widely adopted thanks to large language models and is increasingly entering scientific workflows. While AI has long been established in image-based data analysis, in many other domains it is still in an experimental phase—yet this is changing rapidly. A recent example is the ECMWF’s decision to use AI in its weather forecasting. AI is also reshaping the HPC hardware market, where the high numerical precision required for scientific simulations is no longer essential, and chip manufacturers are shifting toward architectures optimized for AI. The lecture will highlight how these trends are influencing scientific computing and why the effective use of AI can provide a significant competitive advantage.

AI-Driven Archaeology with LLMs — Detecting Archaeological Sites from Aerial Imagery

Discover how artificial intelligence and large language models are redefining the way we uncover traces of the past.

This webinar will explore how advanced AI techniques, inspired by LLMs, can analyse aerial and LiDAR imagery to detect archaeological sites with unprecedented precision. Dr. Daniel Canedo from the University of Aveiro will present real-world use cases where Vision Transformers and multimodal learning reveal hidden patterns in the landscape — bridging technology and cultural heritage.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, November 18th, 2025 | 10:00 AM CEST (9:00 PT)
Online | Free Registration

REGISTRATION

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 LLM Webinar Series connecting high-performance computing with artificial intelligence, culture, and innovation. The webinar will be held in English.

The webinar will be held in English.

Abstract:

Archaeological site detection is entering a new era thanks to advances in remote sensing and artificial intelligence. Archaeological sites such as hillforts often have irregular and complex shapes, making them difficult to identify using conventional computer-vision methods. Multimodal approaches that combine LiDAR-derived LRM images with aerial orthoimagery improve detection accuracy, but false positives remain a major challenge.

This presentation explores how Vision Transformers and LLM-inspired architectures can address these limitations. By using cross-modal attention mechanisms, these models integrate multiple data sources to enable precise boundary detection, reduced false positives, and scalable application across diverse landscapes and site types. A key element of this workflow is a human-in-the-loop refinement process, in which archaeologists review and provide feedback on model predictions. This iterative collaboration enriches the training data, enhances the model’s ability to distinguish true sites from background anomalies, and increases overall detection reliability.

Results from Northwest Iberia show a 99.3% reduction in false positives after a single refinement cycle, while nationwide deployment in England demonstrates robust performance across varied site morphologies. Combining multimodal fusion, transformer-based architectures, and expert-guided refinement, this approach delivers both accuracy and interpretability. The talk will conclude with insights into predictive modelling for identifying high-potential areas, accelerating large-scale archaeological surveys, and improving efficiency in heritage mapping.

Speaker:

Dr. Daniel Canedo – Research Fellow, Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering of Aveiro, University of Aveiro

Dr. Daniel Canedo received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, in 2024. Since 2017, he has been a Research Fellow with the Institute of Electronics and Informatics Engineering of Aveiro (IEETA). His research interests include computer vision and artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on their applications to complex pattern detection and image-based reasoning.

He has published in several international journals and conference proceedings and was awarded first place in the NATO StratCom Competition „How to detect malicious use of video and/or photographic content online” (December 2018, Riga, Latvia).

Topics Include:

• Vision Transformers and multimodal AI for archaeological mapping
• Combining LiDAR and aerial imagery for site detection
• Human-in-the-loop feedback for improved model accuracy
• Case studies: Burial mounds and hillforts in Northwest Iberia and England
• Reducing false positives through cross-modal learning
• Predictive modelling and future directions

Outline:

1. Introduction and Motivation
2. Vision Transformers: Extending the LLM Architecture to Image Processing
3. The Challenges of Detecting Archaeological Sites from Aerial Imagery
4. Use Case 1 – Burial Mounds: methodology, results, lessons learned
5. Use Case 2 – Hillforts: metodology, results, lessons learned
6. Conclusion and future directions
7. Discussion and Q&A

Webinar amália: Towards a Multimodal LLM for European Portuguese

Join us for an inspiring session on the development of amália, Portugal’s large language model designed to bring the richness of European Portuguese into the new era of multimodal artificial intelligence.

This webinar will feature Prof. João Magalhães from NOVA LINCS, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, who will present the goals, architecture, and progress of this national AI initiative. The talk will explore how amália combines text, speech, image, and video understanding, and how it contributes to building culturally aligned and trustworthy AI systems for public, academic, and enterprise use.

Date and Time:
Wednesday, November 12th, 2025 | 10:00 AM CEST (9:00 PT)
Online | Free Registration

REGISTRATION

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 LLM Webinar Series connecting high-performance computing with artificial intelligence, culture, and innovation. The webinar will be held in English.

The webinar will be held in English.

Abstract:

amália is a government-backed large language model focused on European Portuguese, designed to capture linguistic nuances, cultural context, and multimodal capability across text, speech, image, and video. The project aims for high-impact applications in public administration, research, and industry, with a strong emphasis on trust, alignment, and data sovereignty.

This presentation outlines the process and key methodologies employed by the amália LLM Team at NOVA University and Instituto Superior Técnico / UL, with a focus on utilizing European HPC resources such as the Marenostrum 5 (MN5) and Deucalion supercomputers. Prior Portuguese-language initiatives (like GlórIA) and European initiatives (such as EuroLLM) inform benchmarks and evaluation and help define the roadmap from beta to public release.

The core development pipeline is explored through three key dimensions:
1️ Initial data preparation and training, involving an extensive, multi-month process of transforming noisy HTML and PDFs into high-quality raw texts, followed by tokenization and core training methodologies in language modeling and instruction tuning.
2️. Model alignment, achieved through reinforcement learning approaches, Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) and Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) with Verifiable Rewards (VR) to ensure safer and more trustworthy responses.
3️. Infrastructure setup for advanced RLVR (GRPO) training on MN5, which uses inference nodes for sampling and training nodes for collecting samples and running Verifiable Rewards, highlighting the complexity of configuring multiple custom environments (e.g., mathematics, programming, biology).

The talk concludes with key insights into the computational and methodological rigor required to efficiently develop state-of-the-art LLMs, positioning this work at the forefront of Europe’s innovation path in AI.

Speaker:

Prof. João Magalhães – CMU Portugal co-Director; Head of the Multimodal Systems Group, NOVA LINCS, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa

Prof. João Miguel da Costa Magalhães is a Full Professor in the Department of Informatics at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and a senior researcher at NOVA LINCS. He serves as co-Director of the CMU Portugal Program and leads the Multimodal Systems Group. His research focuses on vision-language models, multimodal learning, and AI systems for semantic multimedia. He earned his PhD from Imperial College London and has been a key figure in Portugal’s AI and digital innovation ecosystem.

Topics Include:

• Building the amália model: architecture, training, and data curation
• Multimodal AI for text, speech, image, and video
• Cultural alignment and linguistic sovereignty in LLMs
• Evaluation, transparency, and responsible AI governance
• Future roadmap and collaboration opportunities

Outline:

1. Introduction: Why a Portuguese multimodal LLM
2. From Language to Multimodality: Scope and capabilities of amália
3. Data and Alignment: Linguistic diversity and cultural fidelity
4. Model Architecture and Training Process
5. Status and Roadmap: Beta achievements and next steps
6. Applications and Impact Scenarios
7. Discussion and Q&A