By Aamo Iorliam

The IWBF is a recognized annual workshop on biometrics and forensics which is aimed at applying biometrics techniques to forensics and vice-versa. It was an extensive two-day workshop where I was able to present a poster of my work.

My supervisor (Prof. Anthony TS Ho) was one of the sessions Chair in the workshop. The workshop had four keynote speakers, nine session Chairs, and several oral and poster presentations. The keynote speakers Prof. S.N. Srihari described methods for evaluation of likelihood ratio (LR) to assist in quantifying uncertainty in forensic identification; Prof. Andrzej Drygajlo emphasized on the importance of improving forensic methodologies across Europe which the LR was one of the mentioned methodologies; Prof. Joaquin Gonzalez-Rodriguez gave an overview of the NIST series of speaker recognition evaluations and technologies focusing more on the challenges that the system faces from evaluation to evaluation; Prof. Didier Meuwly spoke on the validation of computer-assisted methods for forensic evaluation of biometric traces and also stressed the importance of likelihood ratios as the acceptable method of presenting evidence which is acceptable in the court. Most of the Keynote speakers emphasized more on the likelihood ratios which is what I am planning to work on for my further research; therefore their work are relevant to my research and I understood the importance of LR more.

It was really a good experience for me, because I met with a lot of researchers around the world and we are looking forward for possible collaboration.  For instance, Prof. Patrick Bours from Norway is discussing with us on using the Benford’s law on keystroke passwords and has already sent the data to us for experiments and collaboration. Also, the city of Valletta which is the capital of Malta is a very beautiful island with beautiful water surrounding. We took an open bus to have a look at the beautiful city and it was awesome.

In general, it was a wonderful experience at Malta and I gained a lot from the workshop which will be very useful for my further research especially in applying LR’s to biometric data.