Swiss research institute involved in U.S. gov’t biometric projects

Idiap Research Institute is working on two major biometric security projects for the U.S. government.

Through its Swiss Center for Biometric Research and Testing, the Idiap Research Institute is engaged in the U.S. government’s Odin and MediFor projects.

The goal of the Odin program is to develop biometric presentation attack detection technologies to ensure biometric security systems can detect when someone is attempting to disguise their biometric identity. Odin is a program administered by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Sébastien Marcel, Head of the Swiss Center for Biometric Research and Testing, said that Idiap’s involvement demonstrates “the reputation of the institute and of its biometrics center on the international scene. Through Odin, we hope to consolidate our expertise, develop our network and continue to position Idiap as a major player in the field of biometric security.”

The Swiss Center for Biometric Research and Testing is also involved with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency‘s Media Forensics (MediFor) program.

The MediFor program aims to bring together world-class researchers to attempt to level the digital imagery playing field, which currently favors the manipulator, by developing technologies for the automated assessment of the integrity of an image or video and integrating these in an end-to-end media forensics platform. If successful, the MediFor platform will automatically detect manipulations, provide detailed information about how these manipulations were performed, and reason about the overall integrity of visual media to facilitate decisions regarding the use of any questionable image or video.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  biometrics research  |  Idiap  |  Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing  |  U.S. Government