BIOMETRICS COUNCIL

A meeting of the newly formed IEEE Biometrics Council Administrative Committee (AdCom) was held via teleconference on Wednesday, 13 August 2008. A slate of candidates for the Biometrics Council Officers was developed to be submitted to members by a mail ballot . A face to face meeting of the AdCom was suggested to be held at selected Biometrics technical conference or workshop, and the venue will be selected by polling members. A draft of the By-laws and constitution for the Council has now been prepared. NPSS has two liaison members to this newly created IEEE group because of potentially overlapping technical interests.
A meeting of the Second International Conference on Biometrics was held in Washington, D.C. Sept. 29 - Oct. 1, 2008: The meeting covered theory, applications and systems focused on biometrics including advances in fundamental pattern recognition techniques relevant to biometrics, new biometric algorithms and / or technologies, analysis of specific applications, and analysis of the social impacts of biometrics technology.
Inspection of the program reveals that the meeting included primarily papers on finger print analysis, and eye scanning methods with a clear focus on homeland security applications.
It does not seem that there is much if any overlap with ongoing or planned NPSS activities but we will monitor the Biometrics Council activities and coordinate when relevant areas of capability and interest arise.
Randy Brill and Ron Jaszczak, the Biometrics Council liaisons, can be reached, respectively at aaron.brill@vanderbilt.edu and rjj@dec3.duhs.duke.edu.