Keynote:
Biometrics and AI: challenges and opportunities
Vincenzo Piuri
Professor in computer engineering at the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. His main research interests are: biometrics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern analysis and recognition, signal and image processing. He has participated in several EU- and MUR- funded projects and published 400+ papers in international journals, proceedings of international conferences, and books. He has edited/authored several books on biometrics technology. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, TX (USA), and visiting researcher at George Mason University, VA (USA). He has been IEEE Vice President for Technical Activities (2015), IEEE Region 8 Director (2023-24), and IEEE Director, President of the IEEE Systems Council, and President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is Editor-in- Chief of the IEEE Open Journal of Computer Society (2025-2026), has been Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Systems Journal (2013-19) and served as General chair and Program chair of several international conferences. He is Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of IFIP, Distinguished Scientist of ACM, and Senior Member of INNS. He received the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Technical Award (2002), the IEEE TAB Hall of Honor (2019), and the Rudolf Kalman Professor Title of the Obuda University, Hungary (2014). He has also received the Honorary Professor recognition at several international institutions.
CloseOnce typically used for critical applications and services, biometric technologies are now pervasively permeating our everyday life enabling seamless and convenient identification, authentication, as well as service assistance, from business to leisure.
Artificial intelligence has been shown effective to extract the relevant knowledge from biometric data in order to increase the performance and deal with less-constrained, unconstrained, and on-the-move acquisition of biometric traits. Besides, modern AI approaches have been developed to distill characteristic information without a priori knowledge of the specific features which are relevant to perform identification and authentication. This allows for expanding the spectrum of applications in daily life, also in difficult environmental conditions. Besides, learning from data allows for higher flexibility and accuracy through operation adaptation.
This lecture will illustrate the main biometrics techniques and the use of artificial intelligence, their strengths, limitations, and applications. Challenges and research directions will also be discussed. Being aware of capabilities and possible threats of biometrics is essential to create biometric-based applications with an ethic-by-design approach which protects the citizens’ privacy and empower them to own their personal data, including their biometric traits.
