Welcome to the 2025 Annual Symposium of the Informatics Society of Central Europe.
This three-day gathering brings together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers
from across the region to share cutting-edge work in artificial intelligence,
information systems, cybersecurity, and data science. We are honoured to host this
year’s edition in Budapest, a city at the crossroads of European innovation and tradition.
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Dr. Mária Kovács
Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary
Keynote: “Explainable AI in High-Stakes Decision Making: Lessons from European Healthcare”
Mária Kovács is Professor of Computer Science at ELTE and director of the
Budapest AI Research Lab. She holds a PhD from the Technical University of Vienna
and has published over 150 papers on interpretable machine learning. She chaired
the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on AI Transparency (2022–2024)
and is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award. Her current work focuses on
post-hoc explanation methods for deep neural networks deployed in clinical settings.
Prof. Dr. Piotr Zieliński
Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
Keynote: “Zero-Trust Architectures for Critical Infrastructure in Central Europe”
Piotr Zieliński is Head of the Cybersecurity Research Group at the Warsaw
University of Technology and a senior advisor to the Polish National Cyber Security
Centre. He earned his doctorate at the University of Cambridge and has led multiple
EU Horizon projects on resilient network design. His research spans intrusion
detection, software-defined perimeter security, and cyber threat intelligence
sharing frameworks across the Visegrád Group countries.
Dr. Elena Stoyanova
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria
Keynote: “Federated Data Science: Privacy-Preserving Analytics at Scale”
Elena Stoyanova is Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Sofia
University. Previously a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for
Intelligent Systems, her work on federated learning and differential privacy has
been adopted by Eurostat for cross-border statistical disclosure control. She
serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality
and co-leads the Balkan Data Science Network.
Programme Schedule — Day 1 (October 15)
| Time |
Session / Event |
Room |
| 08:30–09:00 |
Registration & Welcome Coffee |
Main Lobby |
| 09:00–09:20 |
Opening Ceremony
Dr. István Nagy, President, Informatics Society of Central Europe |
Grand Hall |
| 09:20–10:20 |
Keynote: Prof. Dr. Mária Kovács
“Explainable AI in High-Stakes Decision Making” |
Grand Hall |
| 10:20–10:50 |
Coffee Break — Sponsored by OTP Bank ☕ |
| 10:50–12:30 |
Parallel Paper Sessions I
Track A — AI Room 201
Track B — IS Room 202
Track C — Cyber Room 203
Track D — DS Room 204
|
|
| 12:30–13:45 |
Lunch Break — Danube View Restaurant (Floor 3) |
| 13:45–14:45 |
Keynote: Prof. Dr. Piotr Zieliński
“Zero-Trust Architectures for Critical Infrastructure” |
Grand Hall |
| 14:45–15:10 |
Coffee Break ☕ |
| 15:10–17:00 |
Parallel Paper Sessions II — same room assignments |
|
| 17:00–18:00 |
Poster Session & Demo Night |
Atrium |
| 19:00 |
Welcome Reception — Gundel Restaurant (by invitation) |
Programme Schedule — Day 2 (October 16)
| Time | Session / Event | Room |
|---|
| 09:00–10:00 |
Keynote: Dr. Elena Stoyanova
“Federated Data Science: Privacy-Preserving Analytics at Scale” |
Grand Hall |
| 10:00–10:30 |
Coffee Break — Sponsored by Magyar Telekom ☕ |
| 10:30–12:10 |
Parallel Paper Sessions III — same room assignments |
|
| 12:10–13:30 |
Lunch Break — Danube View Restaurant (Floor 3) |
| 13:30–15:10 |
Parallel Paper Sessions IV — same room assignments |
|
| 15:10–15:40 |
Coffee Break ☕ |
| 15:40–17:00 |
Panel Discussion: “Digital Sovereignty in Central Europe — Challenges and Opportunities”
Moderator: Dr. László Tamás (BME) • Panellists: Kovács, Zieliński, Stoyanova, + Dr. Ana Marić (Zagreb)
|
Grand Hall |
| 19:00 |
Gala Dinner — Pesti Vigadó (Danube Embankment) |
Programme Schedule — Day 3 (October 17)
| Time | Session / Event | Room |
|---|
| 09:00–10:30 |
Parallel Paper Sessions V — same room assignments |
|
| 10:30–11:00 |
Farewell Coffee Break ☕ |
| 11:00–12:00 |
Best Paper Awards & Closing Ceremony |
Grand Hall |
| 12:00–13:00 |
Farewell Lunch |
Danube View Restaurant |
| 13:30–15:30 |
Optional Walking Tour: Buda Castle & Fisherman’s Bastion (guided) |
Meet at Main Lobby |
Paper Presentations — by Track
Track A Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
Session Chair: Dr. Ágnes Farkas, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME)
A1. Transformer-Based Multilingual Named Entity Recognition for Agglutinative Languages
Gábor Németh, Tamás Szabó — University of Szeged, Hungary
A2. Reinforcement Learning with Sparse Rewards for Autonomous Drone Navigation in Urban Canyons
Krzysztof Malinowski, Aleksandra Nowak — AGH University of Kraków, Poland
A3. Contrastive Pre-Training of Graph Neural Networks on Molecular Property Prediction Benchmarks
Barbora Nováková, Jakub Hrubý — Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
A4. Efficient Fine-Tuning Strategies for Large Language Models on Low-Resource Slavic Languages
Milan Petrović, Jelena Jovanović — University of Belgrade, Serbia
A5. Causal Discovery in High-Dimensional Observational Data: A Score-Based Hybrid Approach
András Kiss, Lívia Molnár — Central European University (CEU), Vienna/Budapest
A6. Neural Architecture Search with Hardware-Aware Constraints for Edge Deployment
Ondřej Černý, Petra Dvořáková — Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
Track B Information Systems & Digital Transformation
Session Chair: Dr. Zoltán Horváth, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
B1. A Capability Maturity Model for Digital Government Services in the Visegrád Region
Marta Kowalska, Paweł Wiśniewski — University of Warsaw, Poland
B2. Blockchain-Enabled Traceability in Agri-Food Supply Chains: A Multi-Case Study from the Danube Basin
János Tóth, Viktor Balogh — Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary
B3. ERP Modernization in Post-Soviet Manufacturing Enterprises: Barriers, Drivers, and Outcomes
Oksana Shevchenko, Yuriy Bondarenko — Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
B4. Measuring Digital Maturity in Public Administration: An Empirical Study of Municipalities in Croatia
Ana Marić, Marko Kovačević — University of Zagreb, Croatia
B5. Design Principles for Interoperable e-Health Platforms in Multi-Payer Healthcare Systems
Emese Varga, Ádám Simon — Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
B6. Citizen-Centric Smart City Dashboards: A Design Science Research Approach
Tomáš Hlaváč, Lenka Krajčovičová — Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
Track C Cybersecurity & Information Assurance
Session Chair: Dr. Bálint Horváth, Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary
C1. Ransomware Detection via Hardware Performance Counters: A Real-Time Machine Learning Approach
Lukáš Beneš, Filip Vácha — Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT), Czech Republic
C2. Adversarial Robustness of Network Intrusion Detection Systems Against Gradient-Based Evasion Attacks
Dániel Varga, Péter Németh — University of Pécs, Hungary
C3. Secure Multi-Party Computation for Privacy-Preserving Credit Scoring Across Balkan Banking Consortia
Mihai Popescu, Andreea Ionescu — Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania
C4. Post-Quantum Cryptographic Migration Strategies for e-Government PKI Infrastructures
Katarzyna Wójcik, Tomasz Lewandowski — Poznań University of Technology, Poland
C5. Deepfake-Based Social Engineering: A Threat Analysis and Detection Framework for Central European Languages
Viktorija Lukaševičiūtė, Jonas Kazlauskas — Vilnius University, Lithuania
Track D Data Science & Analytics
Session Chair: Dr. Katalin Molnár, University of Debrecen, Hungary
D1. Spatio-Temporal Modelling of Air Quality in the Carpathian Basin Using Heterogeneous Sensor Networks
Péter Farkas, Éva Szűcs — University of Miskolc, Hungary
D2. Bayesian Hierarchical Models for Regional Inflation Forecasting in EU Member States
Ivan Dimitrov, Maria Georgieva — University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria
D3. Knowledge Graph Construction from Unstructured Medical Records in Hungarian and Polish Clinical Corpora
Anna Lewandowska, Gábor Kiss — Jagiellonian University, Kraków & University of Szeged, Hungary
D4. Streaming Anomaly Detection for Industrial IoT Using Reservoir Computing on Edge Devices
Andrej Kovač, Maja Zupančič — University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
D5. Fairness-Aware Recommendation Systems: Mitigating Popularity Bias in Central European E-Commerce Platforms
Veronika Szabó, Márk Tóth — Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
D6. Transfer Learning for Satellite Crop-Type Classification with Scarce Ground Truth Labels in the Pannonian Region
Mátyás Nagy, Hanna Balázs — Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary
Programme Committee & Session Chairs
| General Chair |
Dr. István Nagy, Informatics Society of Central Europe |
| Programme Co-Chairs |
Dr. Ágnes Farkas (BME) & Dr. Krzysztof Malinowski (AGH Kraków) |
| Track A Chair — AI |
Dr. Ágnes Farkas, Budapest University of Technology and Economics |
| Track B Chair — IS |
Dr. Zoltán Horváth, Corvinus University of Budapest |
| Track C Chair — Cybersecurity |
Dr. Bálint Horváth, Óbuda University, Budapest |
| Track D Chair — Data Science |
Dr. Katalin Molnár, University of Debrecen |
| Poster & Demo Chair |
Dr. Anna Lewandowska, Jagiellonian University, Kraków |
| Local Arrangements |
Dr. Emese Varga, Semmelweis University, Budapest |
| Proceedings Editor |
Dr. Barbora Nováková, Charles University, Prague |
Venue & Practical Information
Conference Venue
Corvinus University of Budapest
Fővám tér 8, 1093 Budapest, Hungary
The main campus is situated along the Danube river in central Budapest,
directly opposite the Great Market Hall (Nagy Vásárcsarnok) and within
walking distance of the Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd).
Getting There
By Metro: M4 line to Fővám tér station (exit directly at the campus).
By Tram: Lines 2, 47, 48, 49 to Fővám tér.
From Airport (BUD): Bus 100E to Deák Ferenc tér, then M3/M2/M4 metro (~45 minutes).
Taxi: Főtaxi official airport partner; ~9,500 HUF (~25 EUR).
Accommodation
Blocks of rooms have been reserved at:
• Danubius Hotel Gellért (5 min walk)
• Mercure Budapest City Center (10 min walk)
• Ibis Budapest Centrum (15 min walk)
Mention booking code ISCESymposium2025 for the discounted rate.
Participating Institutions
🇭🇺 Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest
🇭🇺 Budapest University of Technology & Economics (BME)
🇭🇺 Corvinus University of Budapest
🇭🇺 University of Szeged
🇭🇺 University of Debrecen
🇭🇺 Óbuda University
🇭🇺 Semmelweis University
🇵🇱 University of Warsaw
🇵🇱 AGH University of Kraków
🇵🇱 Jagiellonian University
🇵🇱 Poznań University of Technology
🇨🇿 Charles University, Prague
🇨🇿 Brno University of Technology
🇸🇰 Comenius University, Bratislava
🇷🇴 Politehnica University of Bucharest
🇧🇬 Sofia University
🇷🇸 University of Belgrade
🇭🇷 University of Zagreb
🇸🇮 University of Ljubljana
🇱🇹 Vilnius University
🇺🇦 Taras Shevchenko University, Kyiv