Upcoming Events

The presentation will deal with the methods of fingerprinting, digitization and processing for the creation of fake fingerprints (PAD), the extraction of features (minutiae) and their use for generating synthetic fingerprints, including damage simulation. Last but not least, the fingerprint damage detection and its origin and overall quality estimation of the fingerprint will be mentioned.

Curriculum vitæ

Prof. Martin Drahansky graduated in 2001 from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science BUT and simultaneously from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany. His Ph.D. thesis was focused on generating cryptographic keys from fingerprints, which he defended in 2005 at the Faculty of Information Technology BUT. In 2017 he was promoted to full professor. He worked from 2002 to 2005 at the University of Siegen, Institute of Measurement Technology (Germany) and also collaborated with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt (Germany). In 2014, he went on sabbatical to the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) for half a year. In recent years, he has focused on areas related to biometric systems – processing of images and videos, sensoric systems (including embedded systems and robotics) and IT security. During his leisure activities he practices judo, mountain bike, via ferratas, fitness and mineralogy plus entomology.

Ten years back in spring 2011 our Norwegian Biometrics Laboratory (NBL) was established and for the opening we organized a workshop. Since then we have celebrated the NBL Annual Workshops (NBLAW). All the workshops are listed on the NBL homepage.

Our 10 years celebration will have a modest character due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation. But nevertheless we would like to (virtually) spend the day together with our friends and inform the public about the research that we conduct. Thus the theme of the NBLAW-2021 is "Face Morphing Detection".

Widespread deployment of Automatic Border Control (ABC), along with electronic Machine Readable Travel Documents (eMRTD) for person verification, has enabled a prominent use case of face biometrics in border control applications. The trust anchor are biometric passports. Many countries issue eMRTD passports on the basis of a printed biometric face photo submitted by the applicant, a procedure which allows the possibility of the photo being either altered to beautify the subject’s appearance or morphed to conceal his/her identity. If an eMRTD passport is issued with a morphed facial image, two or more data subjects can then use it to pass a border control. This workshop will present discuss the morphing attack problem and indicate early solutions to detect such morphed facial images.

All times refer to CET.

Virtual events series schedule:

• 2021-03-09 Lunch Talk (FREE, but registration required)
• 2021-03-15 Virtual Conference – day 1
• 2021-03-30 Virtual Conference – day 2

See March 15, 2020 for a full description of the events series

Algorithmic decision systems have frequently been labelled as “biased”, “racist”, “sexist”, “unfair” by numerous media outlets, organisations, and researchers. Are such assessments justified? Should citizens and policymakers be concerned? What is the current state of the research? How can variation across demographic groups be quantified in evaluations of such systems? These and other related matters have recently become a hot topic in the context of biometric technologies, which are ubiquitous in personal, commercial, and governmental applications. Biometrics represent an integral component of many surveillance, access control and operational identity management systems, thus directly or indirectly affecting billions of people all around the world.

The EAB organizes a series of virtual events with “Demographic fairness in biometric systems” as an overarching theme. The events will feature presentations by experts from academic, industry, and governmental organisations and will facilitate interactions and discussions between the experts and the audience.

The goal of the events is to raise awareness, define the problem and propose solutions and possible next steps.

A white paper will be published based on the outcomes of the virtual events.

Our confirmed speakers:

• Aythami Morales – Universidad Autónoma Madrid (UAM)
• Jacob A. Hasselgren - Maryland Test Facilities (MdTF)
• John Howard – Maryland Test Facilities (MdTF)
• Margherita Natali - United Nations Office on Counter Terrorism (UNOCT)
• Patrick Grother – National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Tiago Pereira – IDIAP
• Vincent Despiegel - IDEMIA
• Yevgeniy Sirotin – Maryland Test Facilities (MdTF)

Our confirmed panellists:

• Arun Vemury - U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
• Irina Orssich – European Commission (EC)
• Patrick Grother – National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• Pierre Gacon – IDEMIA
• Ramon Blanco – eu-LISA
• Silke Bargstädt-Franke – Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
• Yevgeniy Sirotin – Maryland Test Facilities (MdTF)

We thank our sponsors:

Workshop of the Biometrics Working Group of TeleTrusT, the IT Security Association in Germany

IWBF is an international forum devoted to facilitating synergies in research and development among the areas of multimedia forensics, forensic biometrics, and forensic science. State-of-the-art research in areas such as biometrics, forensic science, surveillance, and multimedia forensics will be presented. The 9th edition of IWBF will be a meeting place for those concerned with the use of advanced biometric technologies in forensic applications, attracting participants from industry, research, academia, and end-users.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Biometrics
• Attacks to biometric recognition systems
• Multimodal biometrics
• Soft biometrics
• Mobile biometrics
• Biometric analysis of crime scenes
• Forensic Science
• Multimedia forensics
• Integrity verification
• Anonymization & Data Privacy
• Data de-identification
• Surveillance
• Ethical and societal implications
• Information Theoretic Security
• Adversarial Signal Processing
• Case studies on the aforementioned topics

The Norwegian Biometrics Forum (NBF) is an open platform dedicated to regular exchange of information and experience related to the field of Biometrics. The target of the group is the interdisciplinary discussion between research, technology developers, data privacy experts, governmental agencies and operators of Biometric Systems. In the regular meetings new applications, latest research results and products are presented.

From the early days, when security was the driving force behind biometric research, today’s challenges go far beyond security. Machine learning, Image understanding, Signal analysis, Neuroscience, Robotics, Forensic science, Digital forensics and other disciplines, converged in a truly multidisciplinary effort to devise and build advanced systems to facilitate the interpretation of signals recorded from individuals acting in a given environment. This is what we simply call today “Biometrics”.

For the last eighteen years, the International Summer School on Biometrics has been closely following the developments in science and technology to offer a cutting edge, intensive training course, always up to date with the current state-of-the-art.

What are the most up-to-date core biometric technologies developed in the field? What is the potential impact of biometrics in forensic investigation and crime prevention? What can we learn from human perception? How to deploy current Deep Learning approaches? How to deal with adversarial attacks in biometric recognition?

This school follows the successful track of the International Summer Schools on Biometrics held since 2003. In this 18th edition, the courses will mainly focus on new and emerging issues:

• The impact of AI in Biometrics and Biometrics in AI;
• How to make “Deep Biometrics” systems explainable;
• Biometrics for social interactions and emerging applications;
• How to exploit new biometric technologies in forensic and security applications.

The courses will provide a clear and in-depth picture on the state-of-the-art in biometric verification/identification technology, both under the theoretical and scientific point of view as well as in diverse application domains. The lectures will be given by, at least, 18 outstanding experts in the field, from both academia and industry.

An advanced feature of this summer school will be some practical sessions to better understand, “hands on”, the real potential of today’s biometric technologies.

Workshop of the Biometrics Working Group of TeleTrusT, the IT Security Association in Germany

The 8^th edition of the EAB Research Projects Conference will take place as hybrid conference from 13 to 15 September 2021. The conference is organized by the European Association on Biometrics (EAB) in cooperation with the Joint Research Center (DG JRC) of the European Commission, through its Cyber and Digital Citizens’ security Unit. The EAB-RPC 2021 will be co-located with the EAB Biometrics Research, Industry and Max-Snijder-Awards and the IEEE BIOSIG Conference, later that same week.

The conference is currently the largest event on research funded by the European Union in the area of Biometrics and Identity Management. Over the previous successful editions, EAB-RPC has become the main forum in Europe where attendees can simultaneously: promote research carried out in biometrics, forge new links and networks, and identify the appropriate partners for possible future project applications. Last year’s edition welcomed over 100 participants from academia, industry and public institutions.

We thank our partners:

All members of EAB are invited to join us for our annual General Assembly.

EAB is launching the fifteen European Biometric Max Snijder, Research, and Industry Awards. These prestigious awards are 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.

We thank the sponsor of this event:

This seminar aims to provide an opportunity to learn first-hand from world-leading experts both the basics of biometric systems and also the latest developments across the community. It is aimed at a wide range of stakeholders including industrial and governmental developers and end-users, researchers, academics and post-graduate students, and policy makers.

The BIOSIG 2020 conference addresses current issues in the area of biometrics and will present innovations and best practices that can be transferred into future applications.