Assist. Prof. Đukanović’s Research Paper Published in a Leading Journal on Artificial Intelligence

Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Banja Luka, Marko Đukanović, PhD, has co-authored a scientific paper with colleagues from four countries, published in Expert Systems With Applications, one of the world’s most prestigious journals in the field of artificial intelligence, with an impact factor of 7.5.

The paper, entitled “Learning Search Algorithm for the Restricted Longest Common Subsequence Problem”, presents a novel method by which artificial intelligence can contribute to solving complex problems in bioinformatics.

The research combines two powerful tools of modern science: heuristic algorithms, which enable efficient browsing of large search spaces, and neural networks, a model that imitates the learning process of the human brain. This combination produced a hybrid system capable of enhanced decision-making within the search space, thereby achieving significantly better-quality solutions.

An additional contribution of the study is the use of explanatory artificial intelligence, which provides specific reasons for why algorithms yield better or worse results depending on the attribute values of a given problem instance. It is this ability to explain algorithmic decisions that makes the research particularly significant. In the field of combinatorial optimisation, where solutions are often accepted without deeper insight into the underlying performance of the algorithm, this approach represents an important step forward in further improving the algorithms. 

It is worth noting that the study was jointly carried out by six scientists from Slovenia, Serbia, Spain, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition to Assist. Prof. Đukanović, co-authors include Jaume Reixach and Christian Blum, PhD, from the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute  in Barcelona; Ana Nikolić and Tome Eftimov, PhD, from the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana; and Prof. Aleksandar Kartelj, PhD, from the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Belgrade.

The research was supported by a bilateral scientific project between the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Banja Luka and the Jožef Stefan Institute, as well as by the national project “Application of Deep Learning to Improve the Efficiency of Optimisation Algorithms”, funded by the Ministry of Scientific and Technological Development and Higher Education of the Republic of Srpska and led by Assist. Prof. Đukanović.