VENUE: Oval Meeting Room, Palace of Congresses
DATE: 13 October 2025
A high-level presentation of each IPA's investment priorities, strategic sectors, flagship projects, and cross-border cooperation initiatives.
A moderated dialogue between EU and Western Balkans IPAs aimed at deepening institutional cooperation and capacity development through:
An opportunity for informal discussions and networking among participants.
Welcoming speech from National Agency of Information Society/AKSHI
Inspirational Talk: AI for Social Good in the Western Balkans form Sustainable Development Network/SDN
"AI Models in Action: Success Stories Across Fields"
Speakers:
Moderator: Romina Kostani- Director, Directorate of Digital Agenda Coordination and Foreign-Funded e-Gov Projects.
Moderator: Olta Manjani- Deputy Minister, Ministry of Economy and Innovation
Keynote Address from H.E. Prime Minister Edi Rama
AI ideas presentation
Each selected ideas presents their prototype/solution (3 minutes pitch + 2 minutes Q&A)
Jury members:
This session will be led by World Bank Washington DC and will examine how artificial intelligence can reshape education and skills development. AI offers the potential to personalize learning progressions, reduce teachers' administrative tasks and improve school management, yet realizing these benefits depends on enabling conditions such as infrastructure, governance, and teacher capacity. Emerging international evidence shows that AI-powered tutoring and adaptive platforms can deliver significant learning gains, but also carry risks of bias, inequity, or shallow learning if poorly implement. Given the rapidly changing nature of labor markets, there is a pressing need to generate rigorous evidence on how AI can be responsibly harnessed to prepare learners for the future.
Speaker and moderator (15 min)
Panel Discussions, Speakers (35 min)
Closing Remarks (10 min)
H.E. Mirela Kumbaro, Minister of Education
15:10-15:15 Bystro.io, NY, USA
Mason Alban, Co-Founder of Bystro will show us how we use AI for health purposes. Bystro is like Google search, but for DNA and protein sequencing data. It works directly on your data to generate ancestry-corrected polygenic disease risk scores (PRS), find potential drug targets and more. (demo video)
15:15-15:30 Georgios Karamanolis
Co-Founder & CTO/CIO of Crowpolicy Greece
"AI for Cities: Unlocking Local Innovation and Talent" How Artificial Intelligence is already changing the way cities operate from internal assistants for public servants to open data, citizen participation and digital public services. How we can develop projects with social and policy impact and how AI can become a real tool for local development, not just through technology, but by investing in human capital, education and collaboration between central and local institutions.
15:45-16:00 Shqipe Berisha_ TUMO Albania
Sharing a new kind of educational experience at the intersection of technology and design.
16:00-16:10 Françeska Korançe
EIT Community Officer Albania
EU4Innovation Program
"From Small Experiments to Giant Models: What Happens When We Scale Up?"
Speakers:
Moderator: Michaela Jamelska-SENIOR ADVISOR, AI, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Co-Founder of Argus Holdings, incubator of technology and marketing businesses.
In 30 years of experience, David worked for NASA on Voyager II, Galileo and IRAS projects. Several awards from NASA including NASA's Award of Excellence. He co-authored books for Que, Microsoft and New Riders press. He consulted for Microsoft, Intel, Daimler Chrysler, AT&T, Boeing and hundreds of other companies. Microsoft asked David to transition SQL Server for use on the Internet.