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Multimedia Technologies in Biometrics and Information Security Applications (BIOSINF)

Study directions

Multimedia technologies currently constitute a field with spectacular development. On the one hand, digital sound and image processing technology has become ubiquitous in all areas of society and industry, and the transition to digital technology is almost complete. On the other hand, in recent years, there has been an increasing use of modern artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in this field, with already impressive results in speech and audio or image data processing.
In this sense, several important directions in which multimedia technologies are called to play a significant role in the near future can be highlighted:

  • Biometric technologies (methods for uniquely identifying people based on single or multiple intrinsic physical or behavioral traits) have evolved greatly in the last decade. Currently, due to their widespread use as identification, security, and protection elements or due to their use in commercial applications, the study of biometrics-based technologies is necessary. For such applications, training in this direction is necessary both for development and implementation, as well as to understand the market and the requirements of users and producers of such systems.
  • Voice communication interfaces with intelligent systems are already widespread in our modern world, with an obvious requirement to make interaction with robots and computer systems (fixed or portable) or remote access to various services and information as simple, natural, and efficient as possible. The design and development of such systems today rely to a greater extent on new artificial intelligence techniques used in speech processing and natural language processing, the only ones capable of allowing the development of advanced dialogue systems.
  • As a stand-alone science, forensics has emerged as an objective necessity, as a consequence of the fact that the means to counteract criminal acts available to justice had become insufficient. The extent of criminal phenomena, as well as the diversification of methods and means used by offenders, have necessitated the improvement of judicial activity and bringing the fight against crime up-to-date. Often, judicial or law enforcement authorities are faced with problems they cannot solve on their own, requiring the expertise of specialists in scientific fields. Thus, more and more countries today introduce audio-video recordings among the means of evidence, and a thorough knowledge of the main techniques for falsifying or manipulating audio-video signals, as well as methods of expertise and verification of the authenticity of files containing audio and/or video information, are vital in the field of forensic expertise.

Alongside multimedia technologies, information security is also a fundamental requirement of a modern society; cybersecurity is in fact the fastest-growing field in the information technology and computer industry (ICT). Information security involves protocols, technologies, systems, tools, and techniques to secure and prevent malicious attacks that can lead to the loss or theft of information, sometimes critical, from within institutions or companies. As our capabilities to collect, process, and distribute information increase, the demand for ensuring the security of computers, computer networks, and IoT devices increases even more rapidly.

Description:

The BIOSINF Master’s program, which debuted in the 2011-2012 academic year, has two main objectives:

  • Accumulating theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of digital analysis and processing of audio signals, speech, images, and video sequences, especially leveraging modern techniques based on artificial intelligence (classical machine learning models and deep neural networks), with applications in biometric authentication, human-machine interaction, analysis and forensics of audio-video recordings (particularly speech forensics), and the implementation of embedded multimedia systems.
  • Acquiring essential knowledge necessary for the design and safe operation of computer systems, expertise in investigating incidents related to cybersecurity within computer networks or IoT devices, as well as in developing security policies necessary for preventing risks and threats to digital infrastructures.

Website: https://biosinf.pub.ro/

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