University of Lausanne (UNIL), School of Criminal Justice
External professorial appointment in the Faculty of Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration, with teaching and supervision in biometrics and forensic science.
Member of the Direction ad interim
Idiap Research Institute
Member of Idiap’s interim management team since June 2025.
Senior Research Scientist; Head of the Biometrics Security and Privacy Group
Idiap Research Institute
Leads the Biometrics Security and Privacy group. Research focuses on face, speaker, and vein recognition, presentation attack detection, morphing attacks, deepfakes, and template protection. Has secured more than CHF 14 million in research funding and led major Swiss, European, and industrial projects.
Taught the Master’s course in Biometrics in the School of Criminal Justice.
Lecturer
EPFL
Taught the EPFL doctoral course “Fundamentals in Statistical Pattern Recognition” (EE-612), with regular updates including decision trees, t-SNE, deep learning, and Python/JupyterHub-based labs.
Scientific Head, CAS Biometrics and Privacy
UniDistance Switzerland
Led the Certificate of Advanced Studies program in Biometrics and Privacy and contributed teaching on biometrics, machine learning, and open science.
Visiting Associate Professor
University of Cagliari
Visiting academic appointment in early 2010.
Research Scientist
Idiap Research Institute
Conducted research in pattern recognition, machine learning, and biometrics before becoming group head.
R&D Engineer
Orange Labs
Worked in industrial R&D in France while completing doctoral training.
Education
PhD Signal Processing and Telecommunications
Université de Rennes I
Doctoral training in signal processing and telecommunications, completed in 2000 in Rennes, France.
M.A.S. Artificial Intelligence
Université Paul Sabatier
Advanced studies in artificial intelligence, completed in 1996 in Toulouse, France.
M.Sc. Computer Science
Université de Limoges
Master’s degree in computer science, completed in 1995 in Limoges, France.
Skills & Hobbies
Biometrics & Security
Face recognition
Speaker recognition
Vein biometrics
Presentation attack detection
Morphing and deepfake detection
Template protection
Machine Learning & Research
Pattern recognition
Machine learning
Statistical modeling
Scientific evaluation and benchmarking
Research leadership
Grant proposals
Open Science, Teaching & Service
Open-source software
Technology transfer
Academic teaching
Doctoral supervision
Journal editing
Conference organization
Awards
IEEE Fellow
IEEE ∙
January 2025
Recognized for contributions to biometrics security and privacy.
Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR)
IAPR ∙
November 2024
Elected IAPR Fellow.
European Biometrics Research Award
European Association for Biometrics ∙
January 2023
Awarded for “Measuring Linkability of Protected Biometric Templates Using Maximal Leakage.”
IEEE Senior Member
IEEE ∙
January 2019
Elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
Best Paper Award
ICML 2019 Workshop on Synthetic Realities ∙
January 2019
Awarded for “Tampered Speaker Inconsistency Detection with Phonetically Aware Audio-visual Features.”
IAPR Best Paper Award
International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics ∙
January 2019
Awarded for work on custom silicon face masks and vulnerabilities of commercial face recognition systems.
European Biometrics Research Award
European Association for Biometrics ∙
January 2019
Awarded for “Learning How To Recognize Faces in Heterogeneous Environments.”
Biometrics Premium Best Paper Award
IET Biometrics ∙
January 2015
Awarded for “Session variability modelling for face authentication.”
European Biometrics Research Award
European Association for Biometrics ∙
January 2014
Awarded for “A Scalable Formulation of Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis Applied to Face Recognition.”
BTAS Best Paper Award
International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB) ∙
January 2014
Awarded for “Audio-visual gender recognition in uncontrolled environment using variability modeling techniques.”
European Biometrics Industry Award
European Association for Biometrics ∙
January 2012
Awarded for “A fast parts-based approach to speaker verification using boosted slice classifiers.”
Best Scientific Paper Award
International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) ∙
January 2010
Awarded for “Model and Score Adaptation for Biometric Systems Coping with Device Interoperability and Changing Acquisition Conditions.”
Best Paper Award
ECCV 2010 Workshop "Face Detection where we are and what's next?" ∙
January 2010
Awarded for “Fast Bounding Box Estimation based Face Detection.”