World leaders in biometrics met at Idiap

Idiap hosted a Biometrics Week. This one of a kind event gathered several hundreds of people from various backgrounds ranging from academia to industry. Organizers included the European Association for Biometrics and the US based Center for Identification Technology Research.

From deepfakes to privacy and security issues, biometrics is often under the spotlights. Home to two research groups involved in biometrics and the Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing, Idiap became a world hub for researchers and stakeholders in this domain. From April 17 to 21, experts in biometrics met in Martigny to discuss numerous biometrics related topics.

The main focus of this week was the event co-organized by the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) and the US based Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR). Sold out, this event gathered over 160 participants both from the academia and from the industry. Covered topics included among others: evaluation and certification, deepfakes and synthetic realities. The workshop was followed by a poster and demo session. Demos from Idiap and partners ranged from known technologies, such fingerprints, to more novel approaches, such as veins recognition or age estimation.

Toward the future

Following days, the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) organized its Spring 2023 Program Review. Involving CITeR researchers, students and affiliate members, this meeting was a closed research review. CITeR is the only National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC). This initiative focuses on serving its affiliates in the rapidly growing areas of identity science and biometric recognition through interdisciplinary group of faculty, researchers, and students.

“We also aimed at involving students during this Biometrics Week at Idiap,” Sébastien Marcel, head of the Biometrics Security & Privacy research group, explains. Therefore, two scientific projects called TReSPAsS and PRIMA also held meetings with their PhDs at the same time. “It was an opportunity for the students to meet with other participants during the common poster and demos sessions. As the institute is involved in the TReSPAsS project, it seemed obvious there was a link to create. Offering the same chance to the PRIMA project was also obvious,” Marcel concludes.


More information

- EAB & CITeR: workshop program
- CITeR
- Idiap Biometrics Security & Privacy research group
- Idiap AI for Trust research group
- Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing
- TReSPAsS
- PRIMA