ACADEMIA

The International Biometric Performance Conference 2012, to be held March 5-9 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will bring together evaluators, users and technology providers to discuss recent advances in the fields of biometric testing, performance definition and specification, and measurement quality assurance. Biometrics is the practice of measuring and recording unique physical characteristics of a person, and later using those measurements to definitively identify the individual. Common examples are fingerprints, iris patterns and DNA.

The conference is sponsored by NIST, the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory and Germany’s Fraunhofer IGD.

Conference speakers will detail recent developments in how systems are being tested, certified, upgraded and improved. The meeting will focus on identifying fundamental, relevant, effective and new performance metrics for biometric systems and determining and sharing best practices for performance evaluation, calibration and design as they relate to procurement specifications and day-to-day operational testing and evaluation.

The conference tracks include test methods, operational aspects and security and privacy topics. Two half-day workshops will be held in conjunction with the conference. NIST is hosting the conference at its Gaithersburg, Md., facility in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area.

For more information on the conference, see www.nist.gov/itl/iad/ig/ibpc2012.cfm. To register, seehttps://www.fbcinc.com/e/NIST/IPBC/atreg1.aspx.