Invited speakers

Peter Kostelník (Xolution), Martina Ivanová (Faculty of Arts, PU in Prešov, Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, v. v. i.) : Scenes-and-frames Semantics and its possibilities in building a knowledge database of the Slovak language

The presentation will focus on the introduction the SENSE project (Semantic Analysis of the Slovak Language), in which the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences participates together with the Xolution company. The aim of the SENSE project is to design a knowledge database for the Slovak language which would describe how individual words or phrases are transformed into a framework representation, and the creation of software that can use these datasets to interpret the texts on which the machine has not been trained.
To achieve this purpose, the Scenes-and-frames Semantics as introduced in the FrameNet database will be applied. In the methodology of Scenes-and-frames Semantics, frame is defined as a script-like conceptual structure that describes a particular type of situation, object, or event along with its participants and properties. At the same time, FrameNet models meaning in a human-readable way, which also assumes that texts with the same meaning in different languages will be semantically interpreted in the same way, i.e., the semantic representation of the text will be the same regardless of language.
One of the tools that may help in the development of such a database are databases which have arisen from the research on valency properties as developed in the tradition of Slovak linguistics. The existing valency dictionaries of Slovak language may help to overcome one shortcoming of the FrameNet approach, namely, that the coverage of FrameNet is insufficient. It is mainly caused by the methodology of its building, which proceeds frame by frame rather than lemma by lemma. A specific feature of the valency databases of Slovak, on the other hand, is the consistent description of all lemmas of verbs and their consistent assignment to particular semantic classes (which partly have frame-like properties). The presentation will show how these methodologies can be mutually beneficial. In the presentation, practical examples of transformation of text into a framework representation through the experimental software in its pilot stage of development will be shown. The conceptual design and preliminary architecture of the semantic analyser will also be introduced. At the same time, possible pitfalls that syntactic structuring of semantic representation in Slovak may bring about will be pointed out.

Martina Ivanová is Professor of Slovak linguistics at the University of Prešov and the researcher at Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava (Slovakia). Her research focuses on Slovak grammar, morphematics, corpus and cognitive linguistics and teaching Slovak as a second language. She has published monographs on modal verbs and modality, cognitive grammar, verb valency, morphematics and derivational morphology. She is the co-author of five monolingual dictionaries of Slovak language (valency dictionary, dictionary of root morphemes and dictionary of word formation means). Currently, she is also the editor of monolingual dictionary of contemporary Slovak, Slovník súčasného slovenského jazyka (since 2018).

Peter Kostelník is researcher and developer at Xolution, s.r.o. His main areas of interest comprise computational linguistics mostly focused on natural language processing / understanding, semantic modelling, knowledge engineering and expert systems. He participated at several EU R&D projects, where he was commonly responsible for semantic and knowledge technologies and application of artificial intelligence methods. Peter published several journal and conference papers and participated in 2 monography books in area of cognitive sciences. He is also author of multiple natural language and knowledge processing technologies used in Xolution products.

Dirk Arnold (Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada): 60 Years of Evolution Strategies in 60 Minutes

Evolution strategies are stochastic algorithms for black-box optimization with roots that date back 60 years. The approach to their development has been markedly different from that commonly taken in mathematical optimization, and it also sets them apart from other optimization heuristics. This talk explores milestones in the development of evolution strategies with an eye on what has been learned, and what lessons may be useful in other contexts.

Dirk Arnold is a Professor with the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He earned a Ph.D degree from the University of Dortmund and is an Associate Editor of Evolutionary Computation and an Area Editor of the ACM Transactions on Evolutionary Learning and Optimization.

Marian Gheorghe (Univerzity of Bradford): Kernel P systems and connections with membrane systems

This talk will present the key results regarding the computational power of kernel P (kP, for short) systems and some examples illustrating the expressive power of these models. Connections between kP systems and several types of membrane systems will be discussed, pointing to how the later models are mapped into the former ones. Specific verification and validation methods for kP systems will end the presentation.

Marian Gheorghe is currently Professor Emeritus, a 50th Anniversary Chair in Computational Models and Software Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Digital Technologies at the University of Bradford, UK. He holds a PhD in mathematics and compter science with the University of Bucharest, Romania. His research spans over areas such as rewriting models, unconventional computing, membrane computing, testing and verification, applications of modelling and formal verification in systems and synthetic biology, software engineering. MG has more than 260 publications (according to the Research Gate profile), of which 68 journal papers and 79 conference papers are featured in DBLP, and co-edited 6 books and several journal special issues. His papers have been cited more than 5200 times and H-index is 33, according to Google scholar. He is on the editorial board of International Journal of Neural Systems and Journal of Membrane Computing.

Fereydoun Hormozdiari (University of California, Davis): Computational and machine learning methods to study genomics of diseases

Understanding structural variation, genome architecture, and liquid biopsy biomarkers is essential for advancing precision genomics and early disease detection.I will begin by first introducing the necessary background in genomics and biology, with a focus on the role of genetic variants, especially structural variants, in disease. In this talk, I will highlight three projects where we developed computational and AI-driven approaches to address key challenges in computational biology. First, I will introduce a mapping-free framework for comparative genome analysis using long-read sequencing data, which serves as the foundation for a structural variant detection method that combines multiple strategies to improve accuracy, particularly in repetitive regions. Second, I will present a method based on linear programming to predict the impact of structural variants on three-dimensional genome organization, and introducing the TAD fusion score, a metric that quantifies the effect of deletions on topological domain structure and their relevance to disease. Finally, I will describe Orion, a deep generative model using autoencoders for non-invasive cancer detection from circulating small RNAs, which shows strong performance in classifying early-stage lung cancer.
Collectively, these studies demonstrate how novel computational frameworks, spanning structural variant discovery, genome comparison, and AI-driven biomarker analysis, are transforming both our understanding of genome biology and the clinical utility of genomics in disease detection.

Dr. Fereydoun Hormozdiari, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis (UC-Davis), leads a lab focused on computational biology and genomics. He holds a BSc in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, and MSc and PhD degrees in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University, where his doctoral thesis earned him the Governor General Academic Medal. Dr. Hormozdiari's significant contributions have been recognized with the Solan Research Award and the NSF CAREER Award. He has also played a key role in influential consortiums such as the 1000 Genomes Project and the Great Ape Genome Project. His current research focuses on developing computational algorithms and designing machine learning and AI approaches to study human health and diseases, with a particular emphasis on autism and cancer.

Eugen Antal (Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia): From Ink to Algorithms: AI-Powered Processing and Cryptanalysis of Historical Ciphers

In this talk, we will delve into the history of ciphers and techniques of cryptanalysis with a specific focus on the territory of present-day Slovakia. Our historical analysis starts with the early modern period, focusing on the role of the Vienna Cipher Office within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through the study of authentic, encrypted correspondence — specifically between the Esterházy family and the Viennese court — we will demonstrate contemporary research tasks, methodological challenges, and the practical application of artificial intelligence for the processing and decipherment of historical ciphers. Subsequently, we will trace the evolution of ciphers and methods of cryptanalysis within the former Czechoslovakia up to the end of World War II. We will demonstrate the application of metaheuristic algorithms for the general decipherment of these historical ciphers.

Eugen Antal is an assistant professor at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava. He specializes in modern cryptanalysis of classical ciphers. His interest in classical ciphers is motivated by the famous Zodiac killer’s Z340 cipher. Currently, he is investigating historical ciphers from the Central European countries and leads the HCPortal (https://www.hcportal.eu/) project.