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Winners of the 10th European Biometrics Research Award

On 21 September 2016 the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) awarded young researchers for their outstanding works in the area of biometrics. An international jury chose 3 candidates out of a broad range of submitted high quality papers to present their significant contribution in front of the jury, the EAB members and the public audience.

  • The European Biometrics Research Award 2016 has been given to Mateusz Trokielewicz from Biometrics Laboratory, Research and Academic Computer Network (NASK), Warsaw University of Technology, Poland for his thesis titled Iris Recognition Reliability in the Context of Template Aging, Ocular Disorders, and Death. This research presents the most comprehensive analysis of iris recognition reliability in the occurrence of various biological processes happening naturally and pathologically in the human body, including aging, illnesses, and post- mortem changes to date. Insightful conclusions are offered in relation to all three of these aspects. Extensive regression analysis of the template aging phenomenon shows that differences in pupil dilation, combined with certain quality factors of the sample image and the progression of time itself can significantly degrade recognition accuracy. Impactful effects can also be observed when iris recognition is employed with eyes affected by certain eye pathologies or (even more) with eyes of the deceased subjects.
    [Photo] Winner of the EAB Research Award 2016: (f.l.t.r.) Mateusz Trokielewicz, Alexander Nouak, Jean-Christophe Fondeur, Patrizio Campisi
    Winner of the EAB Research Award 2016: (f.l.t.r.) Mateusz Trokielewicz, Alexander Nouak, Jean-Christophe Fondeur, Patrizio Campisi
  • This years European Biometrics Industry Award goes to Chiara Galdi from EURECOM, France for the thesis titled Combining iris and sensor recognition on mobile phones. The potentialities of this technology, from a commercial point of you, are manifold. The proposed system only leverage on the use of the smartphone embedded sensors, and the item to be recognized, along with the biometric characteristic, is the smartphone itself. No additional and dedicated sensors or items are required, limiting the production cost to the development of the software.
    [Photo] Winner of the EAB Industry Award 2016
    Winner of the EAB Research Award 2016: Chiara Galdi during her presentation
  • Special honours were given by the jury to finalist Javier Franco-Pedroso from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain for his contribution titled Feature-based likelihood ratios for speaker recognition from linguistically-constrained formant-based i-vectors.
[Photo] Finalist Javier Franco-Pedroso together with Alexander Nouak and Patrizio Campisi
Finalist Javier Franco-Pedroso together with Alexander Nouak and Patrizio Campisi

The European Research and Industry Awards are both honoured with a 2.000,00 € stipendium for each category. The finalists are also donated a free of charge one year membership of EAB. The European Biometric Research and Industry Awards 2016 are kindly sponsored by Safran Morpho and Fingerprint Cards (FPC).

The selection for the research award has been made on the basis of the academic and scientific quality of the submitted works as well as on the quality of their presentations.

A separate selection was made during the final presentation in order to appoint the winner of the industry award. Criteria for this award are next to the scientific level the novelty, impact, applicability and other business aspects.

The European Biometrics Research and Industry Award is granted annually to individuals who have been judged by a panel of internationally respected experts to be making a significant contribution to the field of biometrics research in Europe. The intention of the award is to stimulate innovation in academic research as well as in industry.

[Photo] Winners of the Awards 2016 together with the jury: (left to right): Patrizio Campisi, Dijana Petrovska Delacretaz, Mateusz Trokielewicz, Raymond Veldhuis, Javier Franco-Pedroso, Christoph Busch, Günther Schumacher, Chiara Galdi, Jean-Christophe Fondeur, Alexander Nouak, Tom Kevenaar, Javier Ortega Garcia and Lars Christensen
Winners of the Awards 2016 together with the jury: (left to right): Patrizio Campisi, Dijana Petrovska Delacretaz, Mateusz Trokielewicz, Raymond Veldhuis, Javier Franco-Pedroso, Christoph Busch, Günther Schumacher, Chiara Galdi, Jean-Christophe Fondeur, Alexander Nouak, Tom Kevenaar, Javier Ortega Garcia and Lars Christensen

The call for submissions for the EAB Research and Industry Award 2017 is available.