The Center of Excellence in Kragujevac to Begin Operations in April or May 2024

Brnabic, during her visit to the final stages of construction at the mentioned facility, emphasized that a tender is currently being issued for equipment and furniture, noting that the construction took longer due to project adjustments to ensure compliance with international standards. However, the government never gave up on this project.

"We believed that this project was extremely important for further development of innovation in Serbia and in Kragujevac. The University of Kragujevac, along with its professors, teaching staff, and students, deserved it", the Prime Minister stated.

According to her, the Center of Excellence will temporarily house the Scientific-Technological Park, making Kragujevac the fifth city in Serbia to have a scientific-technological park, albeit temporarily.

As she explained, Kragujevac needs a much larger scientific-technological park than the one within the Center of Excellence, which only spans 500 square meters. Therefore, starting from the first quarter of the next year, they will begin construction of an innovation district next to the State Data Center, entirely financed from the budget of Serbia.

She assessed the innovation district as one of the most beautiful projects in Serbia, designed by local young architects.

"Thanks to the Data Center, we will practically obtain the entire innovation district because the American company Oracle, which provides its cloud services worldwide from this center, wants to have a larger team here, so Kragujevac will become Oracle's home in Serbia", Brnabic conveyed.

Furthermore, discussions are ongoing with "Mind group" regarding the opening of another scientific-technological park, as well as with representatives of CERN about having a supercomputer for processing big data for CERN in Geneva, which would make Serbia one of only six countries to have this capability.

The Mayor of Kragujevac, Nikola Dasic, emphasized that the University of Kragujevac is one of the city's pillars that has historically made the city larger and opened new fields for its expansion.

The Rector of the University of Kragujevac, Nenad Filipovic, stated that, in addition to financing the construction of housing for young scientists, the university is financially involved in the project of building the Center of Excellence to strengthen scientific research.

The Center of Excellence with the National Bank of Stem Cells, where young scientists from Serbia will work, consists of three parts: bioengineering, biomedicine, and stem cell research.

The first researchers to move into this new scientific institution will be from the Faculty of Medical Sciences, the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, and the Institute for Information Technology at the University of Kragujevac.