National Institute of the Republic of Serbia
ὅδε οἶκος, ὦ ἑταῖρε, μνημεῖον ἐστιν ζωῶν τῶν σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν, καὶ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῶν
Text prepared by Dr Đorđe Baralić and Dr Silvia Ghilezan
The Mathematical Institute of SASA is dedicated to developing a wide range of international collaborations that contribute to joint research projects, partnerships, innovations, building institutional capacities, the promotion of mathematics, mechanics, and computer science, educational exchange and increasing its visibility. Every year, the MISASA hosts more than 100 international guests at its colloquia, seminars, conferences, workshops and other events. The MISASA has numerous forms of cooperation with institutions and researchers from more than 80 countries worldwide. The joint international activities have positioned the MISASA as a highly respected research institution. For example, in the area of advanced techniques of cryptology and blockchain, the extensive cooperation with partners from Japan, India and China resulted in over 100 references, including more than 40 co-authored papers published in leading journals, as well as in eight granted patents in Japan, the US, and China.
The Mathematical Institute of SASA is an institutional member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and actively participates in its professional bodies (Executive Committee and Executive Council meetings) and scientific events, such as the European Congress of Mathematicians. EMS is the main organisation representing mathematicians across Europe. Its mission is to support the development of mathematics in research, education, and applications. The EMS coordinates Europe-wide mathematical activities through committees and scientific groups, publishes journals and books through EMS Press, and fosters international cooperation among national mathematical societies, research institutions, and individual mathematicians.
The MISASA contributes to and supports the work of the European Research Centres on Mathematics and the EMS Young Academy. Đorđe Baralić, a full research professor at the MISASA, is a member of the EMS Committee for European Solidarity (2025–2028), while Vladimir Dragović, a full professor at the MISASA, is a member of the EMS Education Committee (2022–2025) and the EMS Ethics Committee (2019–2026). In March 2026, the MISASA hosted the EMS Executive Committee meeting in Belgrade. Through these activities, the institute strengthens the Serbian mathematical community and integrates it into the wider European mathematical network.
European Research Centres on Mathematics
European Research Centres on Mathematics (ERCOM) is a committee of the European Mathematical Society that brings together leading mathematical research institutes across Europe. Its main goal is to promote scientific cooperation, exchange of researchers, and joint research initiatives among member institutions. ERCOM serves as a platform for sharing best practices in research management, organising scientific events, and strengthening mobility within the European mathematical community.
Membership in ERCOM is granted to institutes with strong international research activity, outstanding scientific output, and a commitment to collaboration. Through its activities, ERCOM supports the development of mathematical research at the highest level and contributes to the visibility and influence of European mathematics on the global scene.
The MISASA became a full member of ERCOM in 2022 and will host the annual ERCOM meeting in Belgrade in March 2026.
To strengthen the voice of Europe’s next generation of mathematicians, the European Mathematical Society established the European Mathematical Society’s Young Academy (EMYA) in 2022. Comprising young researchers and educators from institutions across Europe, EMYA represents emerging mathematicians and contributes fresh perspectives to EMS initiatives.
EMYA’s activities include promoting exchange programmes , organising talks, conferences, and events, and publishing materials that address the professional and personal challenges faced by young mathematicians.
From the Mathematical Institute of SASA, Dr Šejla Dautović and Dr Bogdan Đorđević were elected as EMYA members for 2024–2027. Both actively participate in decision-making, outreach, and promoting opportunities for young Serbian mathematicians. Dr Đorđević also serves as EMYA’s Vice-Secretary, responsible for meeting records, agendas, and coordination of upcoming activities.
The International Commission on the History of Mathematics (ICHM) is the oldest and most representative international association of historians of mathematics, with members from 44 countries all over Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
The ICHM is an inter-union commission joining the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the Division of History of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST/DHST) whose main aims since its founding in 1971 have been to encourage the study of and research in the history of mathematics, and to promote international cooperation and a high level of historically and mathematically sophisticated scholarship in the field. In its effort to support and encourage quality research in the history of mathematics, the ICHM co-sponsors events of high intellectual calibre, and provides individual grants for international research-related activities, especially of younger scholars.
During 2024 and 2025, the ICHM has supported the organisation of the international conference 34th Novembertagung on the History and Philosophy of Mathematics, organised and hosted by the Mathematical Institute of SASA.
In June of 2025, the Executive Committee of the International Commission on the History of Mathematics (ICHM) unanimously approved Serbia’s re-entry into the ICHM, following a 35–year absence. This return has been made possible through the initiative of the MISASA, Serbia’s foremost research centre in the historiography of mathematics since its founding in 1946.
LeTSGEPs — Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans in research institutions
Leading Towards Sustainable Gender Equality Plans in research institutions (LeTSGEPs) was a HORIZON 2020 project carried out from 2020 to 2023. The main objective of the project was to support the implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in research-performing organisations. The project was coordinated by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and funded by more than 2,000,000 euros.
Besides the MISASA, the partners were: RWTH Aachen University (Germany), Università degli Studi di Messina (Italy), Faculty of Economics — University of Tirana (Albania), Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Munich (Germany), Institute of Marine Sciences, Spanish National Research Council, Barcelona (Spain) and CY Cergy Paris Université (France).
Gender Budgeting was a key element of LeTSGEPs, contributing to the effectiveness and sustainability of Gender Equality Plans by identifying resources and the impact of actions on gender equality.
NUCLEUS — New Understanding of Communication, Learning and Engagement in Universities and Scientific Institutions
Within the Horizon 2020 project NUCLEUS – New Understanding of Communication, Learning and Engagement in Universities and Scientific Institutions (2015–2019), the MISASA participated as a partner in an international consortium of 24 institutions coordinated by the Rhine- Waal University of Applied Sciences (Germany). The project focussed on implementing Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) within research organisations by developing and testing new institutional models that foster openness, ethical governance, gender equality, public engagement, and open access to scientific results.
Through activities such as “living labs,” case studies, and pilot actions, NUCLEUS transformed RRI from a conceptual framework into practical organisational change, producing a roadmap and guidance for universities and research institutes seeking to embed RRI principles into their everyday structures. The MISASA’s involvement contributed to strengthening the culture of open science and societal engagement within mathematical research and the wider academic environment.
Blockchain for Creating Decentralized Smart Grid System is a project funded through the SMART4ALL – Horizon 2020 framework (Grant Agreement No. 872614), active from 2023 to 2027. The project focuses on developing and testing a decentralized smart-grid architecture based on blockchain technology, enabling trustworthy and transparent management of energy production, consumption, metering, billing, and peer-to-peer energy trading.
By integrating blockchain into smart-grid operations, BC4GRID aims to increase reliability, data integrity, and efficiency in future energy networks. The Mathematical Institute of SASA participates in the project, contributing expertise in cryptography, data security, and algorithmic aspects of blockchain applications in energy systems.
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a long-standing EU-funded programme that supports the creation of interdisciplinary research and innovation networks across Europe and beyond. Instead of funding research itself, COST funds networking activities that help researchers build communities, exchange ideas, and develop new project proposals.
The MISASA researchers have traditionally been very active within COST networks and host COST-related events. In the last decade, the MISASA staff have participated in the following actions:
A pan–European network of Ocean Tribology CA23155 (2024–2028);
A Multilingual Repository of Phraseme Constructions in Central and Eastern European Languages CA22115 (2023–2027);
Grassroots of Digital Europe: from Historic to Contemporary Cultures of Creative Computing CA21141 (2022–2026);
Information, Coding, and Biological Function: the Dynamics of Life CA21169 (2022–2026);
European Research Network on Formal Proofs CA20111 (2020–2025);
Optimising Design for Inspection CA18203 (2019–2023);
Saving European Archaeology from the Digital Dark Age CA 18128 (2019–2023);
A network for Gravitational Waves, Geophysics and Machine Learning CA17137 (2018–2022);
Correlated Multimodal Imaging in Life Sciences CA 17121 (2018–2020);
A new Network of European BioImage Analysts to advance life science imaging CA 15124 (2016–2020);
New Exploratory Phase in Research on East European Cultures of Dissent CA16213 (2017–2021);
Cryptanalysis of Ubiquitous Computing Systems IC1403 (2014–2018);
Cryptography for Secure Digital Interaction, IC1306 (2014–2018).
The MISASA thermodynamics and geometrical statistics group, in collaboration with the Section for Science of Complex Systems, Centre for Medical Statistics, Informatics and Intelligent Systems, Vienna, carried out a joint bilateral project, ITEMICS — Information-theoretic Entropic Measures In Complex Systems – Theory And Applications (2022–2024). The project was funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia and OeAD – Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation. The project studied generalised entropies and complex systems modelling.
The MISASA collaborates with its Bulgarian counterparts, the Institute for Mathematics and Informatics and the Institute of Mechanics of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The main fields of collaboration are pure and applied mechanics, digitisation of cultural heritage, numerical analysis, engineering and differential geometry.
In the period 2023–2025, two joint projects, Nonlinear Dynamics of Thermally and Mechanically Loaded Composite Structures and Development of Software Tools and Multimedia Technologies for Digital Presentation, Preservation and Management of Cultural Heritage, were funded through the Inter-Academy Agreements on Scientific Cooperation of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Logic and Application (LAP) is an annual international conference and school founded in 2012 and jointly organised by logicians from the MISASA and the Universities of Zagreb, Pennsylvania, Novi Sad, and Bern. The event is hosted by the Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik.
Building on its established good practices and tradition, LAP brings together renowned experts, young researchers, and students from the region and around the world. Numerous PhD theses, research projects, and scientific publications have emerged from collaborations initiated at LAP.
Collaboration between Serbian and French mathematicians dates back to the beginning of university education in Serbia. The MISASA research groups in logic, theoretical computer science, category theory, optimisation, cryptography, information security and applied mathematics have maintained longterm cooperation with French colleagues.
Recent projects funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Serbia and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France, through the programme “Pavle Savić — Partenariat Hubert Curien” were:
Secure and Energy Efficient Distributed Source Coding for Sensor Networks (2018–2019);
CoLoHA — Computational Logics and Higher Algebra (2016–2017);
The Development of Hybrid Heuristics for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems (2016–2017).
The MISASA’s collaboration with partners in Hungary has a long tradition. Much more recent is the cooperation between the MISASA and the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, under the auspices of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which funded the bilateral project “Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics — Theory and Applications” (DMCTA, 2020–2023). The Hungarian team was led in this project by well-known experts in Combinatorics and discrete mathematics, Gyula O.H. Katona and Miklós Simonovits. The MISASA was represented primarily by the mathematicians associated with the seminar “Combinatorics in Geometry, Topology and Algebra” (CGTA), with participants from Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Kragujevac.
The MISASA is engaged in improving the local and regional scientific environment and spreading excellence to the developing world. To this end, the MISASA is actively collaborating with the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics ICTP (Trieste, Italy), which is the only UNESCO Category 1 research institute in Europe.
At the moment, the MISASA is the only research institute in Serbia delegating a researcher to the ICTP’s Associates Programme, one of the oldest and most prestigious schemes among all ICTP activities.
In recent years, the MISASA–ICTP collaboration has resulted in two international training schools organised in Niš (“Information, Noise and Physics of Life” in 2022 and 2024), with the aim of supporting the scientific development in south-east Serbia and of expanding international collaboration and the exchange of scientific and professional knowledge and experience, bridging young researchers and world-renowned scientists from the developed and developing world.
The MISASA has excellent, close cooperation with the Faculty of Sciences, University of Montenegro. Together with the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Montenegro, we have been organising biennial international conferences, the Joint Mathematical Meeting of Serbia & Montenegro (Budva 2019, Belgrade 2023, Petrovac 2025) since 2019.
Regular exchanges of researchers, common scientific publications, and applications for international projects take place. Several MISASA researchers lecture and supervise students in undergraduate, master’s, and PhD programmes at the University of Montenegro.
In Petrovac in September 2023, we jointly organised the Summer School for Future (STE)M Leaders for 25 students from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. This project was funded by the Western Balkan Fund. The MISASA and the University of Montenegro mutually supported each other in establishing cooperation with partners from Europe, China, and Cuba.
The MISASA extensively collaborates with the University of Banja Luka and the University of East Sarajevo. The main fields of this cooperation are algebra, analysis, algebraic topology, applied mathematics, digitisation of cultural heritage and science projects. Researchers from the Republic of Srpska often participate in colloquia, seminars, and conferences organised by the MISASA.
Arguably, the central mathematical events illustrating the fruitful collaboration between the MISASA and the Steklov Mathematical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences are the renowned GDIS conferences, dedicated to Geometry, Dynamics, Integrable Systems (GDIS) and related areas, including classical and celestial mechanics, rigid body dynamics, Hamiltonian dynamics, geometric and topological aspects of dynamics, algebraic geometry, etc.
The GDIS conferences are typically organised every two years. The first was GDIS–2008, in Belgrade, and the latest, GDIS–2024, in Zlatibor (Serbia). Of the nine GDIS conferences held so far, four were organised in Serbia (Belgrade and Zlatibor), three in Russia (Moscow and Izhevsk), GDIS–2011 took place in Lisbon, and GDIS–2014 in Trieste.
The MISASA has active cooperation agreements with the Institute of Computational Technologies (Novosibirsk), the Matrosov Institute for System Dynamics and Control Theory (Irkutsk), and the Institute of Computational Modelling (Krasnoyarsk) of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The MISASA researchers have traditionally had extensive collaborations with colleagues from Slovenia, especially in the fields of algebraic topology, complex analysis, computer science, discrete mathematics and graph theory. Exchanges of researchers and scientific visits occur frequently.
In the last decade, the MISASA has had the most bilateral projects with Slovenian partners: the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Ljubljana, and the University of Primorska in Koper. Recent projects funded by the Ministries of Science of Serbia and Slovenia are:
Applied and Computational Algebraic Topology (2016–2017);
Discrete Morse Theory and Its Applications (2020–2022) and
Modern Trends in Chemical Graph Theory (2020–2022).
In 2018, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the University of Ljubljana and the MISASA implemented the bilateral Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 1, Mobility for learners and staff, Higher Education Student and Staff Mobility.
The topology research group at the MISASA collaborates with topologists from Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon and Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
During the period 2021–2024, they had a joint bilateral project, Multidimensional Persistence and Toric Topology, funded by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of Serbia and TUBITAK, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye.
The two groups have an online Ankara–Belgrade Topology Seminar, which had two in-person meetings, in Belgrade in 2022 and in Ankara in 2023. The main fields of collaboration are applied and computational topology.
During the collaboration with AIST Japan, the MISASA was a participant in the fiveyear (2009–2014) Japan–India project where the partner institutions were Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
In June 2022, the MISASA hosted the India–Serbia workshop on selected topics of Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology techniques and applications.
During the period 2022–2024, the first bilateral joint project, Session Types: Applications, Foundations and Flow Security (STAFFS), was financed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of India. The project brought together the theoretical computer science and logic research groups of the MISASA and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
The joint activities of the MISASA Computer Science Department with China began in 2021, when the first Chinese two-year project was awarded. Since 2025, a five-year Chinese national project has been underway. The partner institution of these two projects in China is the Shandong Computer Science Centre of the Shandong Academy of Sciences. These projects have focussed on information security and have included enhancing the synergy between machine learning, blockchain, and information security.
These joint activities and achieved results have positioned the MISASA as a highly respected institution in advanced techniques of cryptology and blockchain at the regional and international level. The Centre for Combinatorics of Nankai University and the MISASA carried out a Chinese project on graph theory (2024–2025).
Besides computer science, information security, discrete mathematics, and graph theory, there have also been joint publications and collaborations in materials science, robotics, nanostructures, and biotechnologies.
Recent bilateral projects supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of the Republic of Serbia and the People’s Republic of China are:
Reinforcement Learning for Graph Theory (2024–2026);
Hydrogel Ionotronics for Soft Robotic Applications (2024–2026) and
Advanced Analytical and Numerical Methods for Analysis of Functionally Graded Micro/Nanostructures (2018–2019).
Since 1997, the MISASA has had extensive international cooperation with Japanese research centres. The longest of these has been with the University of Tokyo and the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), predominantly from 1997 to 2019.
All the projects in Japan were related to information security, with Academician Miodrag Mihaljević as the main contributor from the MISASA. This collaboration resulted in many outstanding publications and patents.
Furthermore, the MISASA topology group collaborates with the topology research group at Osaka Metropolitan University.
The MISASA research groups in set theory, logic, and topology collaborate, publish jointly, and exchange visits with their colleagues from the National University of Singapore. The MISASA and the Vietnamese Institute for Advanced Studies in Mathematics in Hanoi, Vietnam, have a cooperation agreement.
Specific contacts, established through joint participation in international conferences and forums, exist with colleagues from the Philippines, Myanmar, and Cambodia.
Despite geographical distance, the MISASA has significant scientific and educational connections with colleagues from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay.
The MISASA has active MOU agreements with the Institute for Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics in Havana, Cuba, and with the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Most of our ties with this region are based on personal connections of our researchers who speak Spanish or who have spent part of their academic career there, and which have remained active through occasional visits and joint participation in conferences around the world.
Mathematicians from Argentina and Chile participated in May, the Month of Mathematics, while the MISASA researchers also served as invited speakers at events dedicated to promoting mathematics.
Over the last decade, the MISASA has begun developing scientific and educational contacts with colleagues from African countries. Interest among African researchers in publishing in our journals and participating in our conferences has also increased over the last years.
The MISASA volunteered in two EMS-led initiatives aimed at supporting the capacity-building and training of African mathematicians. Also, our researchers have participated in and promoted our doctoral programmes in several conferences held in Africa.
Limited by the lack of funding opportunities, our collaboration with colleagues from this continent relies heavily on individual contacts and friendships of our research staff, mainly in Morocco, Cabo Verde, Tanzania, Tunisia, Mauritius, Nigeria, and South Africa.
out since 2020 with the Shandong Computer Science Centre (SCSC) of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), the Founding Assembly of the Chinese-Serbian Centre for Advanced Research and Education (CS–CARE) was held on 10 July 2025 at the Mathematical Institute of SASA in Belgrade. At this Assembly, the founders of the Association — the Mathematical Institute of SASA, Belgrade; the Telecommunications Company Telekom Srbija a.d., Belgrade and the Jinan Institute of Supercomputing Technology, Jinan, People’s Republic of China — unanimously adopted the Founding Act of the Association. CS–CARE was established as a voluntary, non-governmental, and non-profit association. It was registered as a legal entity on December 4th, 2025.
The objectives of CS–CARE are as follows:
Basic and applied scientific research;
Technological research and development;
Research projects under contracts with legal entities;
Development projects under contracts with legal entities;
Scientific and research education;
Specialized scientific and research education by contracts with legal entities;
Organization of scientific and research conferences;
Organization of educational events;
International cooperation in scientific research and education;
Organization of donor and humanitarian activities;
Holding general and special meetings and gatherings at which topics and issues of interest to the members are discussed;
Organization of seminars, lectures, forums, courses and other forms of education in the areas of the Association’s goals and tasks, independently or in cooperation with other organizations;
Publishing books, journals and other publications;
Cooperation with state bodies and organizations, universities, schools, and other professional associations and organizations in the People’s Republic of
China, in the Republic of Serbia, and abroad.
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| Signing of the document on the establishment of the China–Serbia Centre for Advanced Research and Education (CS-CARE), 2025 | Building of the “Shandong Computer Science Centre” housing the supercomputer, Jinan, China |