Researcher Peter Rot received the “EAB Biometric Research Award 2024,” an award granted annually by the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) for outstanding achievements in the field of biometrics. The purpose of the award is to promote innovation in biometrics, both in academic and industrial environments. During the ceremony in Darmstadt, Peter also received an award for the best presentation.
His doctoral dissertation, titled “Privacy-preserving Face Analytics Using Deep Learning Methods,” supervised by Prof. Dr. Vitomir Štruc and Prof. Dr. Peter Peer, focuses on the current topic of protecting sensitive information in biometric data. From facial images and biometric templates (i.e., vectors extracted from a facial image and used to determine similarity between faces), it is possible to derive information about so-called soft biometric attributes (e.g., gender, age, and ethnicity) without needing the original facial image. In his dissertation, Peter explores the reliability of methods for protecting these soft biometric attributes and proposes new solutions. The award was granted for a new method that extracts soft biometric attribute information from biometric templates while still retaining enough information to differentiate between individuals.
