Information Technology Transfer Advisor




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Mission Technology Transfer Digital Transformation
Consulting Research
Coaching Academic Custom
Outsourcing

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iTETA consulting is specialized in deploying advanced information technology achievements in praxis. With years of experience and strong competence in Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, E-Government, E-Business, E-Health and Smart Technology we deliver high quality and secure solutions tailored to meet specific customer requirements.

The support is offered through four major activities:

Mission

iTETA fosters information technology transfer and seamless digital transformation by offering support through consultancy, research, coaching and outsourcing.

We feature a holistic approach in solving complex problems by engaging cross-disciplinary considerations in a complete development life-cycle, from modelling and design through development and implementation to final testing, verification and impact evaluation.

We maintain a unique methodology in dealing with digitalization by including technology impact and other non-functional requirements in all system design phases. Quality of service, safety, security and privacy protection thus become an integral part of the whole engineering process and are “by design” guaranteed.

Mission   ▹

Technology transfer

iTETA core strength is a thorough understanding of both, technology innovations and their practical significance. With sound technical knowledge and scientific experience, as well as a good sense for practice and solid understanding of application domain, we effectively work on complex problems offering sustainable solutions to industry and society.

We aim to catalyze and accelerate the process of bringing academic and scientific excellence in practice. Thus we maintain a pool of qualified IT experts and are able to swiftly gather a competent team to deal with diverse practical problems applying state-of-the-art achievements.

We support technology transfer through consultation and outsourcing services.

Mission   ▹

Digital Transformation

iTETA major ambition is to promote digital transformation through digitization and automatization of traditional processes in business, industry, organizations and society. This radical change from singular, physical and analogue to inter-connected, cyber and digital worlds brings many benefits, but also requires special attention and careful consideration of possible unwanted impacts.

We are exceptional in our protective methodology in endorsing digital transformation. With our cross-disciplinary approach, we consider potential disruptive influence of digitalization, reinforcing creativity and innovation and preventing possible negative influences at the same time. Thus, we promote seamless integration of IT solutions into existing processes, making them more efficient while respecting economical and organizational rules, social norms and individual needs.

We support digital transformation through consultation, research and coaching services.

Consulting

Consulting is our core activity in providing technology transfer and digital transformation. We advise customers in choosing appropriate technology to improve their organizational and business objectives. The consultation embraces all phases of system development, from analysis of system requirements and selection of proper technology to complete design, development and deployment process. Besides taking into account functional requirements of application systems, special attention is paid to non-functional requirements like quality, safety, security and real-life protection.

The major consulting expertise is software architecture design for:

Additional domains of competence are:

Research

We promote digital transformation by taking part in research initiatives and projects. Our extensive experience in scientific and applied research stems from years-long participation in European FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes, ranging from successful proposal writing and coordination of excellent projects, to proposal evaluations and project annual reviewing. Specifically cross-disciplinary research with close ties to medicine, psychology, social science and humanity disciplines has been maintained.

Support and expertize in H2020 project preparation and coordination are offered through the following services:

About us   ▹

Biosketch

Nikola Dr. Nikola Šerbedžija is the founder of iTETA Consulting, specialized in deploying advanced information technology achievements in praxis, offering support in digital transformation, research on future technologies, coaching and teaching. He was scientific advisor at Fraunhofer FOKUS [1992-2018], responsible for new research initiatives and innovative technology. He was visiting professor at University of Sydney [1999-2000] and at the University of Arts, Berlin [2000-2007] and has been giving compact courses at various universities in Europe, Australia and Brazil. His research work is primarily concerned with distributed software design, especially applied to ubiquitous systems, cyber-physical systems, IoT and human-centric systems. In addition, his research covers modelling, architectural approach and practical deployment of adaptive and autonomous systems. He was principal investigator in the various research projects that led to REFLECT and ASCENS frameworks for developing pervasive-adaptive systems and self-aware autonomous systems, respectively.

He has been on numerous international conference committees and held various invited/keynote talks at scientific events. He co-authored many chapters in special edition monographies or books and he is the author of over 100 journal and conference papers. He has been acting as an expert for European FP7 and Horizon 2020 programmes, mostly for the Future Emerging Technology actions. He has collaborated with many industries, including Ferrari, Philips, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Zimory, Mobsya etc. either on research projects or as a consultant. He has led numerous practical software development projects for government, industry and small or medium enterprises.

About us   ▹

Contact

    
      iTETA Consulting
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Coaching

We offer specialized courses that clarify technology transfer and digital transformation with a special focus on their disruptive nature. We provide an often-missing cross-discipline consideration of latest technologies, their concepts, application strategies and corresponding business models as well as short and long-term impacts of their use.

We have a broad experience in teaching both academic and further education courses in human-machine interface, cyber-physical systems, autonomous systems, and software engineering domains. With a goal to foster non-standard multi-disciplinary approach, two type of coaching concepts are offered:

Coaching   ▹

Academic Courses

Academic Lectures

An introduction to the advance course that surveys disruptive technologies that enable digital transformation making significant influence on businesses, finance, governance, wellbeing, humanities and society. The course addresses both technical and societal issues.
An introduction to the cross-disciplinary course that survey the current and future trends in information technology and their impact on society with a three-folded focus: (1) to explain innovative technology achievements; (2) to analyze the application potentials, benefits and threats of technology deployments and (3) to investigate means to improve technical solutions re-enforcing positive and preventing negative impacts.
A study of the selected science fiction literature, its visions, warnings and relations to the latest IT achievements.
A survey of most recent pervasive and ubiquitous techniques and their application potentials.
A philosophical perspective of the impacts that smart technology has on us: considers how technology changes our perception, thinking, behavior and other social and individual conducts.
An overview of the recent achievements in creating systems sensitive to our emotional, cognitive and physical state; their promises and threats.
A summary of techniques and practices of bi-directional neuro-communication that has brought the brain in the center of the processing loop.
Software enginering approach to design and develop human centric systems. Focusing on early design phase of human-centered systems, protective mechanisms are investigated to safe-guard the subject of computation. A real-life computing paradigm is introduced, operating with real-life constraints that respect real life experience, preventing possible hazardous situations.
An overview of the impacts and possible societal consequences of massive uses and miss-uses of cyber physical systems.
An overview of the techniques for developing adaptive and autonomous systems and their application in industry, business and society.
A survey of the techniques and application domains of coordinated multi-robot systems, with special emphasis on naturally inspired concepts.
A study of techniques and methods for interfacing humans by connecting sensing and actuating devices to different body receptors under the skin.
A survey of systems of systems that bring together sensing and actuating devices in automated environments where anything can be connected to everything.
A description of new trends in clothing industry that place processors in fabrics of our cloths extending communication abilities and opening new information channels.
An overview of mature and widely used World Wide Web technology with current practices and trends, business models and ethical issues.
A survey of major social network systems, their uses, significance, business models and practices, their positive and negative influences.
A survey of techniques and applications that enables access to shared resources, from single data storage to super-computing: virtualization, resource-provision, client-server model, etc. The technical, practical and ethical consequences of "providing everything as a service".
A survey of techniques and applications that combine physical and virtual world in single reality with the goal to achieve real-world experience using computer driven interactive expereince (e.g. immersive techniques, computer vision, object recognition, etc.).
A study of techniques to analyze and understand phenomena by mining huge data sets: success stories and possible misinterpretations.
A survey of techniques and methods that should radically change industrial production and society as we automatize processes and delegate more and more work to the machines.
An overview of the block-chain technology: theoretical and practical rationale for constructing distributed systems using true distributed algorithms.
A review of techniques and methods to digitize and digitalize analog phenomena, from numbers to complex processes: what are the benefits and what is the price.
A review of techniques and methods in computer supported system that exhibits human like intelligence, e.g learning, evolving and taking autonomous decisions.
A survey of techniques to predict some occurance or probability, based on large data sets. Overview of major analytical methods (classification, prediction, affinity analysis) and statistical techiques and application domains.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Coaching   ▹

Custom Courses

Custom Lectures

The talk examines the computing principles inspired by humanities and explores the design and deployment issues of technical systems that interfere with individuals and/or societies, placing humans directly into the processing loop. The author argues that due to inevitable impact that smart, mobile and web technologies have on individual and social behavior, inclusion of humanities in the early design phase of human-centric systems is a condition sine qua non. The talk explores the possibilities of enriching technical systems with concepts and principles from social science and psychology.
The technologies that can create new markets and disrupt traditional business models are often called disruptive technologies. These technologies are also the major driving forces behind the digital transformation. The talk presents the principles of key emerging topics, such as IoT, predictive analytics, block-chain, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and the rationale for their practical use. In a multidisciplinary manner, both theoretical and practical aspects of the new technologies are cross-examined with a goal to strengthen their potentials and to minimize the risks of their deployment. The dual nature of disruptive technologies is illustrated by numerous examples from different application domains.
Processors are becoming an integral part of almost every product, from toys, telephones, televisions and other home appliances up to transportation means. Almost all information forms (textual, audio, visual) or physical entities (like meteorological, chemo-physical, medical data) are digitized and as such suitable for processing. Industry is automatized and governments offer E-systems for all administrative tasks. There is a growing number of people with chip implants, either for medical or well-being purposes. With all our activities digitally enabled, we are currently experiencing a swift change of our traditionally analogue and physical world to a digital and cyber one. In this talk, we examine benefits and drawbacks of digital transformation tackling both technical and societal issues with the aim to better steer technology and prepare society for the challenges that digital transformation brings.
With consumer electronics becoming increasingly smart we are witnessing the shift of human role in computing from being an information user to becoming a subject of computation. In the processing that takes human body as a transmitter of information and seamlessly uses that information to enhance application control, protective mechanisms are required to safe-guard the subject of computation. Focusing on early design phase of human-centered systems, this approach advocates a strategy to prevent potential negative impacts by defining the real-life paradigm and by inclusion of real-life guards.
Recent achievements in wireless communication, sensor technology and data analyses have created smart environments that feature intelligent and autonomous behavior. In euphoric glorification of new technology trends and their wide use in practice, potential negative effects have been neglected. This presentation considers both positive and detrimental impacts that adaptive and autonomous technologies have on their users. A number of application scenarios where users’ autonomy may be affected by the autonomic control systems are closely analyzed, from the technical as well as from the ethical point of view.
The talk details an effort to construct autonomous systems that control highly dynamic environments where physical and social context, operational and functional requirements and workloads are constantly changing. Our general-purpose solution for knowledge-based, self-aware and adaptive behaviors offers a range of tools and methods to support the system development lifecycle. The methodology is deployed on robot swarms, scientific cloud computing and energy-aware e-mobility control systems. To illustrate the complexity of autonomous behavior an experiment is shown: a human competes with our autonomous robot in performing the given assignment. The experiment places the audience into “the robot perspective” and demonstrates the strengths and weakness of natural versus artificial autonomy offering further assumptions on autonomous systems’ practices and impacts.
Modern control systems are highly collective, constructed of numerous independent entities that have individual, but also share some common goals. Their elements are both autonomous and cooperative featuring a high level of self-awareness and self-expressiveness. A complex control system built with such entities must be robust and adaptive offering maximal utilization with minimal energy and resource use.
The tutorial details a novel approach to respond to such challenges. Several software engineering aspects will be presented: (1) service–component ensembles (SCE) as means to dynamically structure independent and distributed system entities; (2) formalization and modeling the fundamental SCE properties as means to rigorously reason about autonomous behavior and aware-rich networking, and (3) adaptive and knowledge-rich software environments and tools for the development of self-aware, self-adaptive and self-expressive autonomic systems.
The approach to construct complex systems using ensembles of service components is generic and applicable in a number of domains. It relies on general-purpose linguistic and tools support, as well as mechanisms to reason about and to prove system properties. The presented theoretical concepts will be illustrated on four different case studies featuring optimization and adaptive control for vehicular assistance, swarm robotics, cloud computing and e-mobility. All four case studies will be explained in details showing a strong pragmatic orientation of the approach.
Managing software intensive systems that run in highly dynamic environments, where physical and social context, operational and functional requirements and workloads are continuously changing is a grand challenge in software engineering. In search for adequate technical solutions autonomic, knowledge-based and adaptive behavior have emerged as necessary characteristics of smart technology. Here, an approach to engineer smart systems is described, showing how to achieve awareness, adaptation and autonomous functioning of technical systems. The approach is based on decomposition of a complex system in service components – functionally simple building blocks blended with local knowledge attributes. The components behavior that satisfies local goals allows for a local autonomy. The internal components’ knowledge – representing local awareness - is used to dynamically construct ensembles of service components. Ensembles capture collective behavior by grouping service components in many-to-many manner, according to their communication and operational/functional needs meeting global goals, thus yielding autonomous behavior at a collective level. Linguistic constructs and software methods and tools supporting modeling, validation, development and deployment of autonomous systems are presented and illustrated by practical examples. After having shown how autonomous systems can be built, their pragmatic deployment is considered by addressing the following questions: to what extent the presents systems are really autonomous; how autonomous we want them to be; can we control the level of autonomy; what are the application domains that require autonomous systems and in which domains we do not want them. Last but not least, the focus is shifted to the emerging issue of the impact that the development of smart technology can have on individuals and society in general.
Seamless and non-explicit man-machine interaction gains significance as technology evolves and mobile applications become smarter. Ultimate goal of novel “empathic” systems is to understand users’ context and needs in order to function supportively, maximizing utilization, comfort and safety whilst minimizing explicit user intervention. “What you like is what you get” principle is dramatically changing the human-computer interaction landscape. Equipped with numerous sensor devices that observe users in a concrete setting, smart systems are able to derive users’ emotional, cognitive and physical state as well as social context and adapt their functioning accordingly Under the motto: “The best assistant is the one you do not notice”, reflective approach, based on a systematic and sound technology offers control interfaces that expand present systems with awareness-rich behaviour at one side and preserve loyalty to the user at another. The loyalty is defined as a feature that guarantees the protection of user data and absolute user’s control over the extent of use of her/his personalized data. The methods and principles of privacy preserving adaptive interaction are explained. Crossing the discipline barriers, the approach brings different software engineering perspectives, at the same time tackling issues relevant to life-sciences.

Outsourcing

We support technology transfer by offering high quality and low cost outsourcing, engaging IT professionals to deliver state-of-the-art digital solution for a given problem. This allows our customers to reduce expenses and save time for their core competences.

We maintain a network of excellent and reliable nearshore outsourcing partners and can swiftly organize a competent team for software development. In the outsourcing process, our role ranges from a mere mediation in finding the appropriate outsourcing provider up to the project leading, including active participation in software architecture design and, later on, in system verification and validation.

The outsourcing services are provided for a range of practical problems:

iteta.net, since January 2018