biometrics-cybersecurity-idiap-keyplayer

The institute’s growing reputation thanks to its biometrics research group and its Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing, led by Dr Sébastien Marcel, can be measured by its recent successes. Indeed, Google has chosen Idiap as the only European partner within the framework of the exclusive research project Abacus. Also, in the context of spoofing attacks, IARPA, the American Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, has taken Idiap research as inspiration.

Numerous active research projects

In Switzerland, the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) trusted Idiap and its partners (CSEM, HES-SO Valais, BioWatch, KeyLemon and IT Services) and funds 3 new research projects on vein and face biometrics.

In Norway, the Research Council funds a project of 4 years on mobile biometrics (face, voice, iris and fingerprints) for banking applications.

In the United States, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has allowed Idiap to participate in a project of the program « Media Forensics » that aims to detect manipulations of audio and video sources.

The Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing and its BEAT platform at the heart of the ecosystem

All the innovative projects listed above require capturing new biometric data for research and evaluation purposes. Idiap, in collaboration with is partners, has launched an ambitious program to collect multimodal biometrics data (face, voice, vein, iris and fingerprints) from volunteers over the range of 2 years. Data will be anonymous, secured and available for research and evaluation, in particular thanks to the BEAT platform, co-developed by the Swiss Center for Biometrics Research and Testing and backed by the Canton of Valais and the City of Martigny. This platform, unique in its kind, is of growing interest for international actors active in this biometrics cyber-security and computational science in general.