OpenTalks.AI /
19-20 February 2026
Belgrade, Serbia

VP of Research at Meta and previously led AI research at Apple. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton and held positions at MIT, the University of Toronto, and CMU. His research focuses on deep learning, machine learning, and generative AI. He has authored over 250 papers with 200,000+ citations. He served as Program Co-Chair of ICML 2019 and General Chair of ICML 2024, and is a recipient of multiple prestigious awards, including the Sloan Research Fellowship and Nvidia’s Pioneers of AI Award.

AI and computational neuroscience researcher. Co-founder of Brain Corp, founder of Scholarpedia, CEO of SpikeCore (San Diego, CA). Known for seminal work on spiking neural models and brain-inspired AI.

He completed his graduate studies under the scientific supervision of Dmitry Vetrov and Ivan Oseledets, doing research at the intersection of tensor methods and machine learning. Works as a senior research scientist at DeepMind, in the field of offline RL.

Research Scientist Manager, Llama team
Tatiana has dedicated a decade to researching and developing open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools for the world's languages, including BLOOM, mGPT, and various evaluation frameworks.

Professor of Computer Science (Software, Data and Technology)
School of Computer Science & Engineering.
h-index - 147

Director of Artificial Intelligence Development, Yandex

PhD, Senior Researcher at the Lebedev Physical Institute,
Vice President of the Russian Association of Neuroinformatics

MD, PhD, FRAS
Institute for Advanced Brain Studies, MSU

Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vice President for AI Development, Director of the AI Center at Skoltech;
Leading Research Scientist at AIRI.

PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Big Data and Information Retrieval, Faculty of Computer Science, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Lecturer at the Yandex School of Data Analysis.

Researcher at Laboratory of Mathematical Logic of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Mathematical Institute, RAS and Laboratory of Internet Research, HSE, professor of the Academic University, RAS. 

Founder & CEO, Recraft
Recraft V3 is the most recent model and is used by default. Released in October 2024, it ranked first for five consecutive months on the Artificial Analysis public benchmark on Hugging Face, maintaining a clear lead over models from Midjourney, OpenAI, and others.

Senior Quantitative Researcher with 6 years in High-Frequency Trading. Currently responsible for driving ML across the entire trading strategy pipeline in traditional markets.

Quantitative Researcher in High-Frequency Trading. Currently responsible for statistical analysis, model development, and data-driven research in traditional markets.

COO at Toloka AI. Sergey specializes in ML/AI and agentic systems, building large-scale AI platforms, human-in-the-loop workflows, and LLM infrastructure. Previously led search and recommendation engineering teams at Microsoft Bing and Yandex.

Founder of Bioptoc and EORA group of companies, co-founder of DisplAir. Graduate of Moscow State University. Lomonosov. Three times laureate of our suburbs award. Multiple winner of Russian and international hackathons.

Principal Engineer and Team Lead at Huawei
Candidate of Technical Sciences
Associate Professor, Department of Information Systems and Technologies, NRU HSE.

Nebius (ex-Imperial College London, Yandex, IMM UB RAS). His research focuses on reinforcement learning and optimal control for agentic and physical systems. Anton has published extensively in top-tier venues, including ICML and NeurIPS.

Leading Research Fellow, AIRI & ISP RAS

AI-engineer in Bioptic, researcher in physics and AI safety. Building and evaluating deep-research LLM-agents for scientific problems, currently focusing on drug discovery

Head of the Data Analysis department, Kandinsky Lab; PhD student at MIPT; One of the creators of the Kandinsky and Kandinsky Video models

Tatiana hold an M.Sc. in Language Science and Technology from Saarland University. After graduation, joined the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) as a PhD student and researcher. Currently, Tatiana is on leave from her PhD program to pursue an internship at JetBrains, where Tatiana am part of the AI Writing Assistance team. Research interests include efficient data augmentation, dialogue processing, multilingual and low-resource scenarios.

Dmitry Yudin is the Head of the Intelligent Transport Laboratory at the Center for Cognitive Modeling of MIPT and a Principal Research Scientist at AIRI. As part of the Autorobotics team, he won the UpGreat “Level Five” autonomous vehicle competition in 2024 and received the Moscow Region Governor’s Award for Young Scientists in 2023. Since 2009, he has been engaged in research and development in the fields of computer vision and intelligent robotics.

Team Lead, YandexGPT pretraining

Founder True Click Technologies|
Founder myCouncil

Director of the Serbian AI Association since 2023, leading its strategic development and cooperation with public institutions. Since 2025, he has also served as Vice-Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Serbian AI Olympiad.
He holds a law degree from the University of Belgrade and has over 10 years of experience in public administration. He contributed to Serbia’s AI Development Strategy 2025–2030 and works on open-source policy and regulatory sandboxes for AI startups.

philosopher, engineer, systems architect at Naevius Fze

Co-founder of myCouncil, ML Lead at Dynamo Moscow,
formerly at stanki.ru and MTS.
8 years of experience in machine learning, with a focus on NLP and sports analytics.

Founder of AI Ecosystem, ex-CDO Sber, ex-CTO AI Venture Studio

Education - MIPT; semiconductor electronics technology - 5 years; production and sale of computer equipment - 30 years, of which design and production of high-performance computing systems and complexes - 18 years, CEO of Cognitar LLC.

Principal Engineer in Microsoft Azure

Head of Data Delivery and Human Markup at Kandinsky Lab. Over three years of experience in creating datasets for training generative models. Master’s degree from AI Talent Hub.

Computer Vision Team Leader in Severstal Digital. 10+ year of experience in Computer Vision and Machine Learning

PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Director of the Department for Development and Implementation of Artificial Intelligence Systems at BIA Technologies. 10 years of experience in developing logistics planning and automation systems using mathematical optimisation, machine learning and computer vision method

Petr Vytovtov is a lead of an ML and weather forecasting quality team in Yandex Weather. Has 9+ years of experience in Deep Learning and 6+ years in a Weather Forecasting area.

PhD, Senior researcher, lead of Embodied agents team at AIRI, associate professor at Center for Cognitive Modeling MIPT

PhD, head of Kaspersky Neuromorphic Platform, that is based on spiking neural networks and neuromorphic chip Altay, head of development of predictive analytic system "Kaspersky Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection"

PhD, Senior Solution Architect in the Technology Research Department of Kaspersky Lab. Oleg is working on neuromorphic AI development for robotics, operational technologies control, and cybersecurity.

Researcher in the field of spiking neural networks at Kaspersky Lab, head of neuromorphic computation laboratory at Chuvash State University

Head of ML&AI at Lemana Tech (ex-Leroy Merlin). Graduated with honors from Moscow State University, focusing on neural networks training algorithms. 12 years of hands-on experience in applied machine learning & AI. Worked with top companies like Sberbank and RU-Center Group. Won the Runet 2018 Technology & Innovations for creating a domain name recommendation system. Enjoy exploring neurobiology and AI philosophy in free time.

Board-level executive and digital transformation leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling data- and AI-driven businesses in banking, fintech, and financial market infrastructure. Specializes in deploying AI and enterprise data platforms in highly regulated environments, combining strategic leadership with deep hands-on involvement in data architecture, AI systems, and product delivery.

Dmitrii Botov defended his PhD dissertation on NLP in Education. For the past 10 years, he has been training and mentoring ML engineers.
He currently leads the AI Master’s program at ITMO University and is a co-founder of the AI Talent Hub community.
His research interests focus on human-AI collaboration and new AI-first models of education.

Dr. of Sciences (Physics and Math), Prof. RAS, Scientific Director of the MIPT Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Director of AI & Computer Vision of the State Research Institute of Aviation Systems (GosNIIAS), Chairman of Scientific Council of the Russian Association of AI (RAAI)

Dr. of Technical Sciences, Senior Researcher/Full Professor at HSE University

PhD, Head of the Department, Professor, Faculty of Computer Science / Department of Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence
Head of the Laboratory - Faculty of Computer Science / International Laboratory of Intelligent Systems and Structural Analysis
Academic Director of the Educational program - Data Science

PhD, Associate Professor of the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Head of the Youth Laboratory of Computer Vision at the Financial University, senior researcher at ITMO University and Agro engineering Center VIM. Head of the Master's degree program "Computer Vision" at the Financial University.

Head of the Computer Vision Neural Network Technology Group. MIPT graduate. Former researcher at the Interdepartmental Supercomputing Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and leading developer at NTechLab. Interests include deep learning, computer vision, and information retrieval.

PhD, Professor of Computer Science at Constructor University, Professor of Computer Science at National Research University Higher School of Economics

CTO and co-founder of Codeplain, where he develops spec-driven development technology that transforms plain language specifications into production-ready code. With over 16 years of software engineering experience in early-stage startups, he specializes in building scalable systems and engineering teams.

AI researcher and analyst, and a serial entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in technology commercialization. He serves as Chief Analyst at the MIPT Center for Artificial Intelligence and leads the “Almanac Artificial Intelligence” project. He is a strategic AI advisor at Huawei, Director of OpenTalks.AI, and founder of several tech startups.

Co-founder of Karimi, an AI-powered career app helping professionals navigate, grow, and change direction. Chiara builds human-centered products using AI, NLP, and embeddings to support hiring, upskilling, and career decisions. She has worked across startups and public sector projects in Kenya, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.

Chief Technology Officer, NIS a.d. C-level executive with 15+ years of experience leading IT and digital transformation in large industrial holdings, including 7+ years in mining and oil & gas. Specializes in digital strategy, industrial automation, and large-scale implementation of digital platforms and products.  

Innovation Director at Avtodoria LLC and Founding ML Engineer at LogicYield LLC, holds a PhD in Engineering, specializing in Deep Learning for heavy industries. My career has evolved from chemistry researcher to leading AI-driven digital transformations in chemical and mineral fertilizer production.

PhD, AI researcher exploring what happens when we treat AI as partner rather than tool. Background in genomics, software development, entrepreneurship, now building voice AI agents that evolve through dialogue. In 2025, ran one of the first university courses co-taught with an AI voice instructor. Founder of stealth startups in human-AI collaboration.

Data science professional with 8+ years of experience applying graph databases to complex business problems. Co-founder and CTO of ClearPic.ai, developing tools to map business relationships and compliance risks in Central Asia and the Caspian region. Background in financial intelligence and consulting (Deloitte, PwC, Urus Advisory).

Executive Director of DS. Team Lead, Recommender system

Independent AI researcher focused on LLM-based agents and recommender systems. Currently leading the development of a GenAI-driven fintech solution at a startup. PhD, thesis in Graph ML.

CTO and co-founder of Celsus, author of the telegram channel "Varim ML"

Executive Director Enterprise Architecture Department.
IT leader with 30 years of professional experience delivering large-scale projects and digital transformations, PMI PMP

Executive Director Enterprise Architecture Department.
AI Solutions Implementation Strategist. 20+ Years of Digital Transformation Project Management

Biotech research scientist, LLMs enthusiast

I graduated from the Moscow State University of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, the Department of MMP, worked at Yandex, and now I head the LLM at Avito

LLM Engineer at MDST and Course Instructor at ODS. Linguistic Engineer for the Inter-Slavic language. Organizer of DataFest and DataSanity Talks Belgrade.

Dr. Alexander Kotov is currently an Associate Professor in the
Department of Computer Science, the director of the Textual Data
Analytics (TEANA) laboratory, and a member of the Institute for AI and
Data Science at Wayne State University (Detroit, USA). His research
interests are focused on natural language processing and information
retrieval as well as their applications to health informatics. His
research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Google and Ford
Motor Company.

Physicist, solar power plant developer, Head of the Georgian Section of the European Association for Renewable Energy (EUROSOLAR), Deputy Director of the Institute of Materials Science at Tbilisi State University.

Leading Omani expert in AI and Digital Transformation with 23+ years of experience in ICT and a PhD in Technology Adoption (AI & DX). He serves as Director of AI Projects and Director of the National AI Studio, leading national AI initiatives in Oman. He is CEO of Maidaan Artificial Intelligence, a Global AI Ambassador, Certified Chief AI Officer, and Certified AI Auditor (ITU), with extensive experience in large-scale national AI projects across multiple sectors.

PhD, Head of machine learning practice in Lanit Competence Center for Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

Graduated from the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics at Moscow State University in 2004. Has extensive experience in computational linguistics and AI. Contributed to ABBYY’s Compreno NLP technology and was one of the developers of Yandex’s voice assistant Alice. Currently leads Technology Development for Personal Services at Yandex, focusing on media content analysis and generation. In recent years, has been активно engaged in neuromorphic technology research.

Deputy Head of domain T1.Artificial Intelligence, Director of the Division of Data Analysis and Modeling, T1 company

Technical Lead and Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, specializing in Microsoft Office and its integrations with Copilot and AI-driven productivity experiences

Natalia Khanzhina, 13 years in AI, PhD in Engineering. Published 20+ papers at top-tier conferences. Founded a GenAI startup in France, which grew to 50,000 MAU.

Srdjan Stefanović received his PhD in 2025 from the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Belgrade, specializing in functional analysis. He works at the Faculty of Mathematics as a teaching assistant with a PhD. In addition, he is responsible for coordinating cooperation with industry on behalf of the Faculty.

Managing director of SVST Ventures. More than 15 years of diverse international experience in industrial technologies, high-tech entrepreneurship, corporate innovation and venture capital investing; strategy and business development. PhD in physics from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

Pavel Kuznetsov, ML-developer, AI Center, Kontur. He develops AI features for the Kontur.Talk video conferencing platform.

Professor at National Research Nuclear University MEPhI

Alexey Kabanov, an AI and AGI enthusiast and a consciousness philosophy researcher, has been conducting research since 1995. By profession, he is a software developer and corporate IT systems architect.

Ph.D., Founder of Aigents, Founder of AGIRussia, Lead Researcher at Novosibirsk State University

PhD, Head of the Color Reproduction and Synthesis Sector at IITP RAS, Head of an AIRI research group, and Associate Professor at MIPT. Founder of EKSLi and AIVi. His work focuses on color science, computer vision, and intelligent automation. Author of 50+ Q1/A* publications and developer of the world’s first acousto-optic colorimeter.

Researcher at Huawei Russia. Research interests: lossless compression applied to large language models and acceleration of the retraining process.

Researcher at Huawei Russia. PhD student at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Research interests: lossless compression applied to large language models, plasma physics.

NLP Data Scientist at Sberbank. AI Researcher at the International Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Structural Analysis, Higher School of Economics. Research interests include RAG, GraphRAG, LLM-based agents, and tokenization algorithms. Author of publications in the proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics and in reports of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Data Scientist at Sberbank (Department of Corporate Architecture). AI Researcher at the International Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Structural Analysis, Higher School of Economics (HSE). Focuses on NLP, LLM-based agents, and graph-centric AI systems.

DSc., Professor in Control Systems and Robotics, Head of BE2R Research Lab at ITMO University advancing Embodied Intelligence, OC Member of Machines Can See summit.

Yaroslav is a data scientist specializing in time series, LLMs, and ML architecture. He is an organizer of the international AI conference Data Sanity Talks, Senior Data Scientist at Toptal.

Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Belgrade. Her research focuses on NLP and AI, with particular interests in LLMs, sentiment analysis, information retrieval, and text classification.

PhD student at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Belgrade. His research interests lie in machine learning and computer vision, with a primary focus on multi-object tracking. He has professional experience in human action recognition, object detection, re-identification, and tracking, and has recently expanded his work to natural language processing, particularly the development of generative models for agentic frameworks.

Accomplished Chief Data Officer with over 20 years of expertise in data architecture, data management, analytics, and digital transformation. He currently leads the Enterprise Data Management Strategy at NIS A.D. Novi Sad, where he has successfully implemented the corporate Data Platform and is actively working on establishing an AI Platform for the entire organization. Throughout his career, he has spearheaded numerous projects across banking, insurance, and industrial sectors, building scalable DWH/BI systems, optimizing data flows, and fostering a data-driven decision-making culture across enterprises.

Middle Data Scientist in Avito’s LLM team with a focus on Visual Language Models. Works on A-Vision, also contributes to LLM product projects at Avito, including description generation and the buyer assistant.

Senior LLM Research Engineer at Yandex smart assistant Alice, specializing in reinforcement learning for conversational AI agents. I develop production-scale agentic systems and teach graduate courses on LLMs at MIPT. My research focuses on RLHF, multi-turn dialogue systems, and credit assignment in sequential decision-making, with publications in Nature npj Computational Materials and ICLR

Senior Software Engineer at Applied Sciences Group, Microsoft. Based in Belgrade, Serbia. Previously improved Speech Recognition and Natural Language Understanding services at Alice Voice Assistant, Yandex. Besides that, he was an NLP Research Assistant at HSE University, Russia.

Experienced ML engineer with a strong passion for agentic AI. Proven track record of building and leading high-performing teams as a lead developer.

Founder @ AlphaSemantic (first ever semantic search for VC), venture capitalist