CITeR Membership
The Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) is an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). This center has been created with the core mission to advance the state of the art in human identification capabilities through coordinated university research. This initiative invites industry players to join forces in a cooperative effort to support and drive high quality research in biometrics and in return, to have privileged access to the developed technologies.
CITeR consists of a number of academic sites (typically universities), and industry partners. The academic sites in CITeR conduct research projects focussing on the basic and applied research needs of CITeR members. Thus, CITeR members may fund sponsored research on proprietary projects for which they exclusively receive the research results. In the process, the CITeR membership fees are directly used to fund graduate-level research. To date it boasts membership of over 20 companies and organizations such as Idemia, Qualcomm, Infineon, Integrated Biometrics, Precise Biometrics, the FBI and Defense Research and Development Canada. The Swiss Biometrics Center is the first non-U.S. academic site of CITeR.
Why should you become a CITeR affiliate?
Industrial partners gain membership of CITeR by becoming affiliate partners of one of its academic sites. Any company, public R&D organization, or laboratory operated by a government-owned contractor is eligible to become a CITeR affiliate. In broad terms, being a CITeR affliate brings you the following benefits:
- Research Access: CITeR affiliates (members) can attend the twice yearly meetings to review progress of current projects and to propose new projects. In addition to your own partner site, participation at these meetings gives you access to a wider community of biometrics resesearchers. At these meetings, you will also have the right to vote on which proposals should be funded by CITeR for the next round of projects. CITeR membership may also help to establish contacts with new, future customers.
- Project Monitor: Members can mentor specific research projects at a CITeR site, that may be relevant to their business needs.
- Exclusive Rights to Results: you will have exclusive access to the outcomes of the projects sponsored by you. Affiliates have the right to obtain worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual licenses to the results obtained within the projects funded by the Center, sub-licensable to its wholly owned subsidiaries.
- Review and Deferral: the affiliates have the right to review publication requests of papers and presentations containing results and request a deferral of a limited time in case the publication contains patentable results or require protection.
- Funding opportunities: CITeR membership opens up possibilities for teaming up with academic partners for project-proposals addressing specific government funding initiatives.
Our affiliates
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Past Affiliates |
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Recent CITeR Projects at Idiap
CITeR projects are typically funded for a period of one year, starting either in October or Spring March. The start date of a project corresponds to the CITeR meeting (Fall or Spring) in which the project is approved. In recent years, we have undertaken the following projects within the scope of CITeR:
- GENPAI — Oct. 2023 – Oct. 2024
- FAIRFACE — Jan. 2020 – Dec. 2020
- VLM4FORBIO — March 2025 – March 2026
International Experts Gather in Martigny to Discuss Advances in AI and Facial Recognition on May 19 - 20, 2025
