AI2FUTURE 2025

Prof. Jonatan Lerga is Full Professor of Electrical Engineering and Associate Dean for Education at the University of Rijeka, Croatia. He received his PhD from the University of Zagreb in 2011. He founded and directs the University of Rijeka Center for Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity and heads the Information Processing Laboratory. Prof. Lerga has authored more than 110 scientific papers, including 30 Q1-ranked journal articles, and has led numerous EU Horizon, Digital Europe, and national research projects. His work has been cited over 1,100 times (Google Scholar). Honors include the 2022 Croatian State Science Award, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Award, and several regional and university prizes. He serves on editorial boards of international journals, reviews extensively, and is a member of UNESCO’s International Research Centre on AI and Croatia’s National Council for Digital Transformation. His research focuses on digital signal processing, artificial intelligence applications, coding, and cryptography.

Ena Aničić is machine learning engineer at Atomic Intelligence. She holds bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and a master’s degrees in mathematical statistics from the University of Zagreb. She works on a variety of projects in AI, some of which are music source separation, document layout analysis and synthetic data generation for medical applications. Her work involves both research and generation of novel ideas and solutions, as well as engineering and efficient implementation of her results. Ena is also actively engaged in the AI community, regularly participating in conferences and events to stay at the forefront of trends and advancements in the field.

Presentation: Unlocking LLM Potential for Text-to-SQL

Seasoned business leader with a product management background leading a tiny, efficient and very experienced team of Velebit AI that implements B2B solutions and delivers AI services for online marketplaces, publishing, e-commerce, gaming, biotech and many other industries. Serial entrepreneur starting in the early internet days but also spent five years in academia and 15 years in the corporate environment in various roles across industries like telecommunications, online publishing, and technology transfer. Driven to understand how AI will interact with humans and change our livelihoods in the years to come.

Head of Press and Media Andrea Čović Vidović has over 15 years of professional experience in EU affairs, diplomacy, communication, management and mentoring. Since July 2022 she has been Head of Media at the European Commission in Croatia and Deputy Head of Commission Representation since February 2023, with the role of Acting Head of Representation since 1 July 2023. She was in charge of public relations for the European Parliament in Croatia since its inauguration in February 2013 until July 2022. She worked at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs as a diplomat on Croatia's EU membership negotiations and as EU policies lecturer. Thereafter she headed EU sectors at the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labour, Pension System, Family and Social Policy. During her studies, she was a freelancer on international cultural projects at the Institute for International Relations and Development in Zagreb, before being recruited as regional coordinator of international ICT projects for UNIQA insurance. She holds a Master’s degree in contemporary European Studies from the Sussex University in the UK, as well as in German and English Studies from the University of Zagreb. She studied International Relations and German Studies at the Technical University of Dresden and conducted her PhD research in Comparative Politics at the University of Zagreb and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations in Washington DC. She is alumna of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the US Fulbright Programme and the British Chevening Programme. A volunteer in several non-profit organisations, she is the author of projects „Women in the Lead“ for the Academy for Political Development and „AI in PR: Educating the Next Generation of Communicators“ for the Croatian Public Relations Association.