In memory of Antun Balaž - insights into complex systems

11 Jun 2026, 09:00 → 12 Jun 2026, 18:30 Europe/Belgrade

“Zvonko Marić” lecture hall (Institute of Physics Belgrade)

Deeply saddened by Antun’s early and unexpected passing in July last year, as his friends and colleagues, we have decided to host a workshop that will honor his life and scientific achievements, keeping up the memory of Antun and the legacy of his work. The workshop is a gathering of Antun’s distinguished colleagues and successors. Taking into account Antun’s broad research interest and expertise, the workshop will include a total of four sessions scheduled over two days on 11 and 12 June 2026. Dinner for invited speakers will be organized on 11 June 2026 in the evening. Two sessions will be dedicated to recent results in the field of cold atoms. One session will cover recent advances in the field of high-performance computing. In addition, in a special session, lectures will be given by prominent researchers who, although working across diverse areas of science, have had their paths intersect with Antun’s.

Dr. Antun Balaž (1973-2025)

Scientific committee

• Dr. Ivana Vasić, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Axel Pelster, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
• Dr. Alexandru Nicolin-Żaczek, Institute of Space Science, Romania
• Dr. Marina Radulaški, University of California Davis, USA
• Dr. Emanouil Atanasov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

Organizing committee

• Dr. Marija Mitrović Dankulov, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Nenad Vukmirović, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Dušan Vudragović, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Ivana Vasić, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Igor Franović, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia
• Dr. Ana Hudomal, Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia

Thursday, 11 June

09:00 → 13:30 Biographical session

Convener: Dr Aleksandar Belić (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

09:00 Completing Feynman's path integral program: Lagrangian path integral measure

Speaker: Dr Aleksandar Bogojević (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

09:30 Path integrals at warp speed: reporting to my captain for quarter-century

Speaker: Dr Danica Stojiljković (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

10:00 Bosonic dynamics in optical lattices

Speaker: Dr Ivana Vasić (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 On the open-dissipative nature of photon Bose-Einstein condensates

Speaker: Prof. Axel Pelster (Physics Department and Research Center OPTIMAS, RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany)

11:30 Dipole‑induced Fermi‑surface anisotropy in strongly dipolar quantum gases

Speaker: Dr Vladimir Veljić (Institute of Physics Belgrade (alumni, presently Delhaize International, Serbia))

12:00 Faraday and resonant waves in dipolar cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates

Speaker: Dr Dušan Vudragović (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

12:30 Sound in ring dipolar supersolids

Speaker: Dr Marija Šindik (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

13:00 Nonthermalizing dynamics and quantum criticality in programmable Rydberg atom arrays

Speaker: Dr Ana Hudomal (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

13:30 → 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 → 18:30 Ultracold atoms session

Convener: Dr Ivana Vasić (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

14:30 The quantum age: from atoms and photons to quantum computers

Speaker: Prof. Vladan Vuletić (Department of Physics and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)

15:00 Photons in a dye-filled cavity: quantum-optical system interpolating between Bose-Einstein condensates and laser-like states

Speaker: Dr Milan Radonjić (University of Hamburg, Germany, and Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

15:30 Unconventional topological phases in some lattices

Speaker: Prof. Hrvoje Buljan (Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Croatia)

16:00 Coffee break

16:30 A universal speed limit for spreading of coherence

Speaker: Prof. Zoran Hadžibabić (University of Cambridge, UK)

17:00 Pattern-forming instabilities in BECs: An homage to Antun Balaž

Speaker: Dr Alexandru Nicolin-Żaczek (Institute of Space Science, Romania)

17:30 Mach-Zehnder interferometer for in-situ characterization of atom traps

Speaker: Dr Maxim Efremov (German Aerospace Center, Institute of Quantum Technologies, Germany)

18:00 Solitons on the surface of a sphere

Speaker: Dr Alexander Wolf (Institute of Quantum Physics and Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology, Ulm University, Germany)

20:00 → 23:00 Conference Dinner

Friday, 12 June

09:00 → 13:30 High-performance computing session

Convener: Dr Dušan Vudragović (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

09:00 European open science cloud: enabling open and collaborative research

Speaker: Prof. Anastas Mishev (Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, North Macedonia)

09:30 The Serbian AI Factory Antenna: bridging high-performance computing with energy and environmental sustainability

Speaker: Dr Miloš Ivanović (Faculty of Science, University of Kragujevac, Serbia and Faculty of Information Studies, Novo mesto, Slovenia)

10:00 Grid computing for large-scale scientific research

Speaker: Dr Mihajlo Savić (University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina)

10:30 Coffee break

11:00 From HPC and GRID infrastructures to digital ecosystems

Speaker: Dr Cozzini Stefano (Institute for Research and Innovative Technologies, AREA Science Park, Italy)

11:30 High-performance applications on heterogenous systems - benchmarking and optimisation

Speaker: Prof. Emanouil Atanassov (Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria)

12:00 Building regional e-Infrastructure for advanced scientific computing

Speaker: Dr Ognjen Prnjat (Greek Research And Technology Network, Athens, Greece)

12:30 Atomic solitons in optical lattices

Speaker: Prof. Luca Salasnich (University of Padova, Italy)

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 18:30 Friends’ session

Conveners: Dr Marija Mitrović Dankulov (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia), Dr Nenad Vukmirović (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)

14:00 Integrated quantum photonics developed with and for quantum hardware

Speaker: Prof. Marina Radulaški (Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, USA)

14:30 Nature-inspired periodicity on optical table

Speaker: Dr Jovana Petrović (Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Serbia)

15:00 Exploring lattice gauge theories with classical and quantum simulations

Speaker: Prof. Marina Krstić Marinković (Institut für Theoretische Physik, ETH Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland)

15:30 Atomistic modeling of valence change memory devices: What can we learn from simulations?

Speaker: Dr Marko Mladenović (Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Switzerland)

16:00 Coffee break

16:30 Noncommutative AdS spacetime: classical limits & the boundary

Speaker: Prof. Maja Burić (Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade, Serbia)

17:00 From classical to fuzzy de Sitter spacetime and back

Speaker: Prof. Duško Latas (Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade, Serbia)

17:30 Complex networks analysis of Belgian railway

Speaker: Dr Jelena Grujić (Dataminded, Brussels, Belgium)

18:00 Large Language Models as voting mechanisms and their economic rationality

Speaker: Prof. Raša Karapandža (EBS Business School, Germany, and New York University, US)