After obtaining a Master's degree in Forensic Science at the University of Lausanne, Bettina Hirter started her professional career as a document specialist at the Swiss Federal Office of Police (fedpol).

In 2018, she took over the project lead for the renewal of the Swiss identity card, followed by the new passport project two years later.

Bettina is also the deputy head of the unit Technology and Development of Documents at fedpol.

The new edition of the famous red cover passport was launched in October 2022; the identity card followed a few months later. This presentation will give you an inside look into the new Swiss state-of-the-art document family.

Daniela Höllersberger is a Forensic Document Expert with the Document and Handwriting Section of the Forensic Science Service, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior of Austria.

She joined the department more than 30 years ago and has been involved in many projects regarding document security, detection of forged documents and the development of new documents, like the new Austrian ID and travel documents.

Besides to the examination of identity, travel and various other kinds of documents, she provides experience in the development of training programs such as on aspects of detection of forgeries and developments in document security features.

Daniela will present the updated electronic machine-readable Austrian passport: the first one containing a polycarbonate data page, making it more secure.

Michael holds a Diploma in Organic Chemistry from Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, where he gained a PhD in Organic Synthesis and worked as a Scientific Assistant from 1994 to 1996.

In 1997, Michael became R&D Manager at the Consortium for Electrochemical Industry (Central Research Company of Wacker Chemie AG) in Munich and took over responsibility for the development of organic effect pigments for coatings, paints and (security) printing inks.

In 1999, he was appointed Laboratory Head Technical Marketing at Wacker Chemie AG in Burghausen, where he overlooked business development and product management for organic effect pigments for security printing, cosmetics and automotive coatings.

Michael then joined the security ink specialist SICPA in 2005, heading their operations in Germany as Managing Director, and in 2010 became responsible for Western Europe and Canada as well, as Regional Business Director Banknote.

Since January 2019 Michael has been Managing Director of Orell Füssli’s security printing division.

Marcin Lemieszek has been a Questioned Document Expert at the Forensic Laboratory of Warsaw Metropolitan Police since 2015 and deals with document-related crimes.

He also provides training to frontline policemen to verify the authenticity of documents, and to future questioned document experts from Forensic Laboratories of the Polish Police.

To be able to deliver first-line, hands-on support to others, he still regularly takes part in police patrols controlling vehicles and drivers.

From 2016 to 2019, Marcin was a member of the Committee of Experts of Questioned Documents of Poland’s Ministry of Interior and Administration and he has been serving on its Commission for Public Documents since 2019.

The training of frontline officers is the key to success in the fight against document forgery. Marcin will present an example of successful training implementation and its results.

Mei Ngan is a scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Her research focus includes the evaluation of face and tattoo recognition technologies.

She is currently involved in several key face recognition testing activities at NIST, which include running the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) MORPH project to evaluate face morphing detection algorithms and the FRVT PAD project to evaluate presentation attack detection capabilities.

Mei has authored and co-authored various technical publications, including the accuracy of face recognition with face masks and performance of facial age and gender estimation algorithms.

She 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 honouring innovative women in the biometrics field.

Technology advances in automated face recognition (FR) have motivated its ubiquitous deployment in both government and commercial applications. Ways to attack FR systems have consecutively surfaced and advanced, driving the need for technology that can detect these attacks and for testing the effectiveness of such technology. This presentation will give the latest updates on face morphing detection and software-based presentation attack detection out of the NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) Program.

Tony has more than 20 years’ experience in government business development, marketing, management and public policy.

As an expert in counterfeit deterrence technologies, he leads AJW’s Document Security practice and supports industry leading companies in formulating and implementing strategies for the development, introduction, and adoption of high security production equipment and sophisticated anti-counterfeit security devices/documents for major agencies of the United States Government.

Leveraging his counterfeit deterrence expertise, Tony has been an active member of the Document Security Alliance for over a decade; prior to his current position as President, he served as Industry Board Member for two terms and as Chairman of DSA’s Program Committee.

Tony is a member of the Advisory Board of ID and Secure Document News.

He co-founded the Banknote Conference and served as Director for more than 14 years.

Tony holds a Bachelors in Business Management degree from James Madison University.

Jonathan Rochon joined Canada’s passport program in 2002.

Originally working at the front lines as a passport examiner, he later oversaw departmental personnel security screening services and related physical security matters before migrating to the field of secure documents in 2008.

Over the course of the past 12 years, Jonathan has developed an expertise in the competitive procurement, evaluation and implementation of passport contracts and solutions.

In so doing, he has overseen travel document design services and the integration of security features, personalization technologies, quality assurances measures and related issuance applications in a complex decentralized issuance network in Canada and abroad.

Jonathan has now overseen the development of the 2013 A Series Canadian Passport as well as the end-to-end research, development, procurement and design of the most recent 2023 B Series, introducing significant technological, security, and design enhancements to the document.

This presentation will examine the 10-year process of developing requirements and a new passport design, including the many hurdles and successes that such an operation involves.

Uwe studied experimental physics and optics at the University of Jena and the York University, Toronto.

After some years in industry with the AGFA-Gevaert company, he joined the Forensic Science Institute of the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt) as an ID document expert in 2000 and is now heading the BKA’s IT Forensics and Document section.

Uwe was actively involved in various projects dealing with the introduction of biometric technology into German travel documents, the development of the electronic ID card and recently, the new German EU passport.

He is an active member of ICAO's New Technology Working Group and of the ICAO Technical Advisory Group TAG/TRIP.

Nick Titcombe has been working for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) for the last 17 years and has been part of the National Document Centre (NDC) since 2010.

He is a Document Specialist with considerable experience in travel, identity and civil document analysis, training delivery, and Canadian border operations and policies.

Nick is a recognised subject matter expert regarding the production of secure documents and current trends in fraudulent documents.

He has assisted partner agencies to develop travel documents, fraud detection techniques, and he is the lead NDC trainer for document examination.

As such, he regularly delivers training sessions to front line officers and international partner agencies.

Nick will be discussing an interesting new trend that has emerged over the last two years as high- quality counterfeit Canadian visas were intercepted. He will explain how his department has been able to connect these cases through similarities in the reproduction process of the counterfeits themselves, even though the travellers had no known link.

Juan Pablo Valiente Plaza is an expert in travel and identity documents and manages a team specialised in documentary falsehoods at the Spanish National Police, where he is responsible for the national forgery desk in charge of coordination, technical support and information management.

On national and international level, he also contributes to updating databases such as FADO and the Frontex Reference Manual.

He additionally develops training activities for Spanish and international security forces and collaborates in several task groups and training activities with international organizations such as Frontex, Europol, INTERPOL and the UN.

Juan’s presentation will be dedicated to explaining the latest forgeries in passports and ID 1 format documents detected in Spain, both from the physical and biometrical point of view.