CarMen partner Hochschule Darmstadt – University of Applied Sciences (H-DA) contributed to the international biometric research community through its participation in the EAB Council of Wisdom on Iris Recognition, organised by the European Association for Biometrics (EAB). Representatives of H-DA joined a distinguished panel of five international experts to discuss current and emerging challenges in iris recognition technologies. The expert session addressed key questions shaping the field in 2026 and beyond, including:
- Technological trends in iris recognition for the coming years,
- Availability and limitations of open datasets for model training,
- Advances in presentation attack detection (PAD),
- The role of synthetic data and ongoing challenges related to the domain gap.
Iris recognition represents a core component of the CarMen project’s multimodal biometric framework, which integrates face, iris, and periocular modalities to enhance robustness in non-stop border control scenarios. The discussions on presentation attack detection, dataset quality, and synthetic data directly align with CarMen’s objectives to ensure secure, reliable, and operationally viable biometric authentication in uncontrolled environments.
Contribution to scientific dialogue within the European biometric ecosystem, CarMen reinforces its commitment to research excellence, knowledge exchange, and alignment with state-of-the-art developments. Such engagement ensures that project outcomes remain at the forefront of biometric innovation while addressing practical security requirements in real-world border management contexts.