COVID-19 Pushes Biometrics Institute’s US Conference Back to September

The ongoing coronavirus epidemic continues to disrupt the biometrics industry’s events calendar, with the Biometrics Institute announcing that it has postponed its US Conference.

The event was originally slated to take place this month, but has now been pushed back to September 21st in the interest of mitigating the spread of COVID-19. In the meantime, the Biometrics Institute has scheduled what it describes as “an extraordinary online meeting” for March 24th.

As for the September 21st US Conference, the Biometrics Institute has suggested that it will place a strong focus on the ongoing controversy and debate concerning government use of biometrics, and facial recognition in particular. Patrick Grother, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s biometric standards and testing lead, and the author of NIST’s Face Recognition Vendor Test report from December, will be on hand to discuss demographic bias together with The Maryland Test Facility data scientist John Howard.

Other speakers for the US Conference include Microsoft USA Senior Policy Director Frank Torres, NEC Corporation of America Biometrics Solutions Software Development Director Austin Park, Trust Stamp CTO Scott Francis, and several high-level officials from government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the UK’s Home Office, among others.

As for the Biometrics Institute’s other planned events, its Singapore member meeting has also been postponed to September, with specific dates yet to be confirmed; and the organization says it will continue monitoring the pandemic situation with respect to planned meetings in Brussels and Sydney.

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March 18, 2020 – by Alex Perala