Biometrics Conference Meets Sept. 22–24 in Florida

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Security Agency (NSA) are cosponsoring the Biometric Consortium Conference 2009 on Sept. 22-24 at the Tampa (Fla.) Convention Center.

The Biometric Consortium Conference focuses on biometric technologies—methods to identify humans using one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral characteristics—for national defense, homeland security, law enforcement, identity management, border crossing, electronic commerce and other applications. The conference offers two and a half days of presentations, seminars and panel discussions with internationally recognized experts in biometric technologies, system and application developers, IT business strategists, and government and commercial officers.

Attendees—including policy developers and decision-makers, government and industry executives, information technology users and developers, law enforcement officials, systems integrators and researchers—will be able to hear and discuss management and implementation issues across a broad spectrum of government agencies.

Keynote speakers include the Department of Defense's director of defense research and engineering and chief technology officer, Zachary J. Lemnios; John M. (Mike) McConnell, senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton and former Director of National Intelligence; and Louis E. Grever, executive assistant director, Science & Technology Branch, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In addition to federal agency-related tracks, there will be sessions on the role of biometrics in health care, biometrics in education and training, biometrics in cyber security, biometric standards, international activities in biometrics and biometric-enabled intelligence. This year, the First IEEE International Conference on Biometrics, Identity and Security (BIdS) will be co-located with the Biometric Consortium Conference. This conference is being organized and sponsored by the IEEE Biometrics Council.

The Biometric Consortium Conference will include a number of separate workshops including "Virtual Identity – the Rise of the Avatars and the Shadow Internet," "IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional Program," "Biometrics Testing & the Emergence of Biometric Laboratory Certification," "Emerging Biometrics" and "Biometrics 2020 – A Needs-Based View of How Large-Scale Biometric Architectures Will Evolve Over the Next 10 Years."

For more information and to register see [link removed]. Members of the news media interested in attending should contact Evelyn Brown, evelyn.brown [at] nist.gov (evelyn[dot]brown[at]nist[dot]gov), (301) 975-5661.