AI-AGE at the President’s High-Level Discussion on Artificial Intelligence

Cetinje, 28 July 2026 – A member of the AI-AGE project team took part in a high-level meeting on artificial intelligence hosted by the President of Montenegro and the President’s Cabinet. Our representative was among a group of around ten AI experts from Montenegro invited to this important discussion, alongside the President of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU), representatives of universities, the diaspora, the Montenegrin AI Association (MAIA), and industry.

The discussion focused on directions for the development of artificial intelligence in Montenegro, including the need for data centres and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, and the role of research and education in building national AI capacity. These themes are closely aligned with the mission of AI-AGE, which brings together expertise in AI, HPC and biomedical research to develop non-invasive biomarkers of aging and to strengthen research and educational capacity in the country.

Being invited to this meeting was an important opportunity for AI-AGE to contribute to the national conversation on AI at the highest level of public administration. As part of the discussion, our representative proposed that domain experts — including professionals from the medical field — be included in the strategic dialogue on artificial intelligence in Montenegro, ensuring that AI development is guided by real needs in healthcare and other application areas. The team looks forward to taking part in the further steps that follow from this discussion.

More about the meeting: the President of Montenegro’s Instagram and the post on X.

AI-AGE Team Member Participated in Oxford Machine Learning School 2026

Oxford, 14–18 July 2026 – A member of the AI-AGE project team participated in the Oxford Machine Learning School 2026 (OxML), attending the MLx Representation Learning & Generative AI module. The intensive programme brought together more than 150 participants and lecturers from leading academic and industrial research environments, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London and Google DeepMind.

Participation in the Oxford Machine Learning School 2026 (OxML)

Over four days, the programme covered advanced topics in modern machine learning, ranging from frontier models for vision and language to multimodal representation learning, generative AI and agentic systems. Particular value came from the strong theoretical foundations underlying these methods, complemented by discussions and exchange with researchers from across Europe and beyond.

This was also an opportunity to network with researchers from all over the World

Participation in OxML contributes directly to the capacity-building objectives of the AI-AGE project, strengthening expertise in advanced AI and machine learning methods relevant to the project’s research activities. Such training is particularly important for developing the methodological knowledge required to apply state-of-the-art AI approaches to biomedical data, representation learning and the identification of non-invasive biomarkers of aging.

Dr Stevan Cakic

Participation was co-financed through the 2026 Call for Co-financing Scientific Research Activities provided by the Ministry of Education, science and Innovation.

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 during her MSc 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.

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. Kavaric during his MSc defence (NCC Montenegro)

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.