2026 IEEE Zooming Innovation in Consumer Technologies International Conference (ZINC)
June 3-4, 2026
Novi Sad, Serbia
2026 IEEE Zooming Innovation in Consumer Technologies International Conference (ZINC)
June 3-4, 2026
Novi Sad, Serbia
Fabrice Labeau
IEEE CTSoc President
Prof. Dr. Fabrice Labeau is the Vice-president (Administration and Finance) at McGill University. His research interests are in applications of signal processing. He has (co-)authored more than 200 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings in these areas.
Prof. Labeau is the Director of Operations of STARaCom, an interuniversity research center grouping 50 professors and 500 researchers from 10 universities in the province of Quebec, Canada. He is very involved in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and in particular in the IEEE Consumer Technology Society, IEEE Sensors Council, IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and the IEEE Montreal Section.
He was a recipient in 2015 and 2017 of the McGill University Equity and Community Building Award (team category), of the 2008 and 2016 Outstanding Service Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and of the 2017 W.S. Read Outstanding Service Award form IEEE Canada. He was recognized in 2018 as “Ambassadeur Accrédité” for the Montreal Convention Center.
Marko Anastasov
Bogdan Pavković
The challenge of introducing DevOps and CI/CD best practices into diverse software development projects lies in overcoming cultural resistance, technical debt, and mismatched workflows. Many organizations, particularly in legacy-driven sectors like finance or government, cling to waterfall or siloed development models, viewing DevOps as disruptive rather than transformative. This resistance often stems from fears of increased complexity, steep learning curves, or perceived risks to system stability. Yet, the heterogeneity of modern software ecosystems—spanning cloud-native startups to monolithic enterprise systems—makes this challenge compelling. Integrating DevOps requires reconciling diverse team dynamics, toolchains, and project scales, offering a unique opportunity to rethink collaboration and efficiency.
The historical evolution of DevOps, emerging from the Agile movement in the late 2000s, underscores its necessity. Pioneered by companies like Amazon and Netflix, DevOps bridged development and operations to enable rapid, reliable releases. Conversely, Nokia’s slow software delivery in the 2000s, which contributed to its mobile market collapse, highlights the perils of neglecting CI/CD. These cases illustrate how manual processes, and poor collaboration can cripple innovation and competitiveness.
Introducing DevOps into traditionally resistant domains, such as healthcare or automotive, could yield transformative outcomes. Automated pipelines enhance delivery speed, reduce errors, and improve system reliability, enabling faster market responsiveness. For example, a healthcare provider adopting CI/CD could streamline patient data systems, improving care delivery. Moreover, DevOps fosters a culture of shared responsibility, breaking down silos and empowering cross-functional teams. However, challenges like regulatory compliance or legacy system integration may arise, requiring tailored strategies.
To fully realize DevOps’ potential, organizations must invest in training, incremental adoption, and robust tooling. Leaders should prioritize cultural shifts, encouraging experimentation and failure tolerance. Exploring hybrid models, blending DevOps with traditional methodologies, or leveraging AI-driven automation for testing and monitoring, could further ease transitions. By addressing these challenges, diverse projects can harness DevOps to drive innovation, resilience, and market leadership, ensuring they automate effectively or risk obsolescence.
Marko Anastasov is a software engineer and entrepreneur. He is a cofounder of Semaphore, a continuous integration and delivery platform that streamlines code testing and deployment for organizations ranging from startups to public companies. Marko has over 15 years of experience building mission-critical developer infrastructure and high-performance teams.
Prof. Dr. Bogdan Pavkovic is the CTO of NIT Institute, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences - University of Novi Sad, and Safety Consultant and Instructor at the University of California San Diego. His focus is on application of Functional Safety and SOTIF for software-defined vehicles in automotive production projects for the industry leading OEMs across several design centers in Europe. Professor Pavkovic was leading a large team working on cutting edge computer vision and machine learning optimizations for embedded automotive platforms for top-tier OEMs from both camera and lidar domain, with regard to their appropriate design and utilization with regard to safety. He has extensive professional experience in planning, executing, leading, supporting and analyzing research projects and technologies in computer engineering, communication technologies and automotive software.
This great keynote session asks common yet systematized questions and provides preliminary findings on how users behave around AI. Our two keynote speakers will give overviews of the latest activities in understanding how AI influences user cognition and behavior, including trust, ethics, and self-efficacy outcomes of its use.
In this respect, Dr. Laurynas Adomaitis will present AIOLIA, a project that has the goal of giving a robust 3-tier response to the complex challenges posed by the need to operationally interpret the EU AI Act and global AI regulation. Dr. Adomaitis will show the digest outcome of an extensive literature review on the influence of AI on human cognition and behavior, and vice versa – how AI developers draw inspiration from human cognition. Four main common axes between human cognition and AI are analyzed: 1) Generalization, 2) Causal inference, 3) Embodied learning, and 4) Emotions. In addition to the literature review, AIOLIA performed semi-structured interviews with leading experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, AI, and robotics to validate the findings. Some of the working group’s insights were new or unexpected given the desk-research phase. Some unexpected findings through “no-go zones” are covered, including hypotheses that seem like a natural long-term effect of using AI, but experts do not see evidence for it in their fields of expertise. Finally, Dr. Adomaitis will discuss the upcoming phases of the project and how the co-creation process will work.
Prof. Snježana Babić will extend the story by showing results of a research conducted among 110 Croatian users to examine the relationship between trust, self-assessment of digital competences and perceived self-efficacy in using ChatGPT in everyday life. The results of Pearson's correlation analysis indicate a statistically significant positive relationship between all three factors. Furthermore, the respondents stated on average that they have the necessary digital competencies to use this tool and to apply it independently in everyday activities; however, they lacked confidence in this technology. In particular, the need to increase users' awareness of the ethical aspects of using ChatGPT and to develop their digital competence for integrating ChatGPT with other digital tools was identified. Suggestions are given as to developing strategies and educational programs that encourage effective and responsible use of ChatGPT, as well as AI in general.
Dr. Laurynas Adomaitis is an AI Ethics and Governance Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, specialising in bridging the gap between ethics and engineering practice. Previously, Laurynas was a postdoctoral researcher at CEA-Saclay, working in multiple EU Horizon projects. Laurynas has taught AI and Data Ethics at leading engineering faculties (SupOptique, CentraleSupélec) and business schools (emlyon) in Paris. He also has industry experience as an Innovation Manager at Nord Security, a cybersec unicorn from Vilnius. He defended his PhD in Philosophy cum laude at Scuola Normale Superiore in 2020.
Prof. Dr. Snježana Babić is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Informatics, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia. She is the head of the master's program in Informatics with a specialization in teaching. She holds a PhD in the field of acceptance and adoption of e-learning and the development of competencies for its application in education. Her research interests include innovation adoption, human-computer interaction, and early programming education. In 2024, she authored a study examining students’ perceptions of ChatGPT as a virtual assistant in academic environments. Dr. Babić has also contributed to research on the use of intelligent personal assistants in education, particularly among Croatian primary school teachers. She is actively involved in several projects.
Laurynas Adomaitis
Snježana Babić