Zoran Ševarac, PhD

Zoran Ševarac is an AI and machine learning expert, Java Champion and CEO of Deep Netts, where he leads the company's mission to make AI in Java faster, leaner and easier to integrate. With more than two decades of experience in software engineering, AI research and open-source development, his work has consistently focused on making advanced AI accessible, reliable and production-ready for Java developers and enterprises.

He is a Full Professor at the University of Belgrade, where he heads the Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence and teaches software engineering and AI, including on the doctoral programme in Biomedical Engineering and Intelligent Systems. His 2004 doctoral thesis on a framework for developing neural networks became the foundation of Neuroph, the open-source Java neural network framework that won the Duke's Choice Award at JavaOne 2013 for the most innovative software on the Java platform – and from which Deep Netts later grew.

Zoran is a member of the Java Community Process Executive Committee and its AI Working Group, and co-spec lead, with Frank Greco, of JSR 381 – the Visual Recognition API that became the official Java standard for machine-learning-based image recognition, with Deep Netts as its reference implementation. The two received the JCP Member of the Year award in 2023. A long-time member of the NetBeans Dream Team and an initial committer when NetBeans moved to open source, he is a regular speaker at JavaOne, Devoxx, QCon, FOSDEM and JCrete, and was featured in the JavaOne 2026 keynote.