DATE

22 April 2026

TIME

13:30 – 17.30

DURATION

Four hours including a short break

LOCATION

Brussels Bloom Hotel, Brussels, Belgium 

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

This half-day workshop, taking place as a side event to the ID@Borders Conference 2026, will dive into the topic of Facial Recognition Performance led by an international subject matter expert.

The workshop will give a broad look at the current state of the art in face recognition, touching on a wide range of technical topics that are usually considered when planning and deploying a face recognition system. The session will be organised into three segments:

• First, a detailed look at the eight tracks of NIST’s large scale Face Recognition and Face Analysis Technology Evaluations (FRTE and FATE) including: One-to-many face recognition; quality assessment; morphing; presentation attack detection; and distinguishing twins; and age estimation. This section will start with material on core algorithmic capability in one-to-one and one-to-many use cases, limits of capability, scalability, ageing, threshold management, speed and resource consumption, morph detection, effects of image quality on recognition, and joint face-plus-iris operation.
  
  
• Second, the session will include the latest information on demographic effects, including state of the art, causal factors, what’s important and what’s not, implications for one-to-many search applications, mitigations, recent research, goals for that research, and advances in testing and measurement.
  
  
• Third, we will include material on satellite topics that are necessary for an in-context view of face recognition in applications: human vs. machine performance, absolute human performance, presentation attack detection vs. its bigger security context, systems vs. algorithms, remaining gaps and inabilities. We will also tour new standards including demographic testing, compact faces for QR codes, relaxed face photography, operational testing, synthetic images, and public area systems under EU AI law.
  
  

WORKSHOP PRESENTERS

Patrick Grother is a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology responsible for biometric standards and testing. He leads the IREX, FRTE, FATE and FIVE evaluations of iris and face recognition technologies that support biometrics in national scale identity management. He co-chairs NIST’s International Face Performance Conference on measurement, metrics and certification. Patrick has received U. S. Department of Commerce Gold Medals on three occasions, for work on biometrics in border control, for contributions to the PIV credential, and for work defining and quantifying demographic effects in biometrics.  Patrick assists a number of US Government agencies on research, development and evaluation. Since 2018 he serves as chair of the SC37 committee on Biometrics and is editor of five ISO standards there. He received the IEC 1906 Award in 2009 and the ANSI Lohse IT Medal in 2013. 

Mei Ngan is a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA.  Her research focus includes evaluation of face recognition and tattoo recognition technologies.  She is currently involved in a number of key face biometrics testing activities at NIST, which include running the Face Analysis Technology Evaluation (FATE) MORPH project to evaluate face morphing detection algorithms and the Face Recognition Technology Evaluation (FRTE) FIVE project to evaluate face recognition in video capabilities.  Mei has authored and co-authored multiple technical publications, including the accuracy of face recognition with face masks, performance of passive presentation attack detection algorithms, and performance of facial age and gender estimation algorithms.  Mei was awarded the United States Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award in 2020 and was a recipient of the 2020 Women in Biometrics Award, a globally recognized award honoring innovative women in the biometrics field.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

End-users, integrators, application developers and others interested in the technical performance aspects of face detection and recognition. 

COST  

Member: €530+VAT@21% 
Non-member: €710+VAT@21% 
University subscriber: €320+VAT@21% 
University non-subscriber: €370+VAT@21% 

Students: Request a special student rate by contacting Shelley@biometricsinstitute.org 
(Proof of full time student status required) 

The Institute seeks to provide a positive, safe and productive environment at our events in order to foster and encourage the exchange of ideas and provide equal opportunities and treatment for all participants. Participants are expected to treat others with respect and consideration. Free and open discussion and debate are important and valued benefits of the Institute’s community. 

We ask that all attendees registered for our events note and abide by the Institute’s Code of Conduct so as to ensure a positive, respectful and rewarding experience for all.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER NOTIFICATION

The Biometrics Institute provides training and course material as a tool to help you conduct due diligence. While the Institute has used reasonable care to ensure the accuracy of the material and course, due to the content and variable inputs during and after the process of implementing biometrics, the Institute cannot be held accountable for outcomes or compliance. The material and course have been prepared for informational purposes only and are not intended to provide legal or compliance advice. You should consult your legal advisor should you require advice on the legal or compliance aspects of the material or course.