Speakers

Keynote Speaker     Presentation:  Passenger Differentiation   

Biography: 

At the beginning of his career Wilfried Covent was Police Commissioner with the local police in Belgium. But in 1994 he became involved in the aviation security industry. He first joined the (previous) Belgian Airline SABENA – being the airline security manager.  A few years later he switched to the air cargo / express industry, to become the aviation security manager for DHL Express Europe.

In February 2010 Wilfried started to work in the airport environment being the  Head of Security at Brussels Airport. Recently he moved to a senior security expert function within Brussels Airport.

In this function he has been appointed as Chairman of the ACI-Europe Security Committee. (Airports Council International – representing +/- 500 airports in Europe).

Daniel is a Mechanical Engineer who started his professional carrier in 1995 as a consulting engineer for renewable energies. In 2001, he joined the Daimler-Chrysler Group and was responsible for the development and implementation of a Safety and Environmental Management System at Mercedes-Benz Luxembourg.

 He joined lux-Airport as one of the first employees in February 2004. After his Security Manager training at the “European Aviation Security Training Institute” in Brussels, he was appointed as Head of Airport Security and was responsible for establishing the lux-Airport security department, which counts today 350 internal and external security agents. Furthermore, he is responsible for the implementation of all security measures at Luxembourg Airport. He is representing lux-Airport in the National Security Committee as well as in the Airport Security Committee and is also member of the security committee of Airport Council International Europe (ACI Europe).

Daniel was born in 1970, he is married and father of 3 children. He speaks Luxembourgish, German, French and English.

Guest Speaker     Presentation:  Challenges, Threats, Opportunities and the Human Factor

Biography: 

As a member of ICTS Europe’s Compliance, Product Quality and Training Department (PQCT), and as ICTS Europe’s Quality Manager, Enno Geissler advises ICTS Europe subsidiaries in professional, managerial, regulatory, and operational matters. He monitors the regulatory requirements applicable to the company’s activities and oversees its compliance status. He has overall responsibility for the ICTS Europe quality management system, conducts audits of company subsidiaries, assists and prepares them for third-party audits and certifications, and designs and implements quality management systems.

As Training Manager, Mr. Geissler designs, organizes and conducts trainings, both internally for ICTS Europe subsidiaries, and for external clients in Europe and abroad. He has conducted security-related training for airlines, handling agents and other security providers in Europe and internationally. Mr. Geissler also acts as a subject matter expert on regulatory compliance and security questions in the development of in-house computer-based training programs.

Enno Geissler has previously held a 10-year posting as Station Manager in Geneva for ICTS Switzerland, with overall operational, managerial, and administrative responsibility.

Chronology:

1998 – 2007: Supervisor, Operations Manager, Station Manager (ICTS Security Consultants, Ltd., Geneva, Switzerland)

Since 1999:   Internal Quality Auditor

Since 2004: Instructor, Senior International Trainer

Since 2010: Training Manager & Quality Manager (ICTS Europe S.A.)

Key qualifications: Aviation Security Expert, X-ray Control Operator (Hold Baggage and Cargo Screening), Senior Security Supervisor, Operational Manager, International Quality Auditor, Quality Manager, Training Manager, Senior International Instructor, Avsec and Cargo SME.

Speaker     Presentation: Welcome & Opening Statement

Biography: 

Dr. Stelios C. A. Thomopoulos *received his Diploma of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in July 1978 from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. He earned his M.S. degree in January 1981 and Ph.D. degree in January 1983, both in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the State University of New York at Buffalo. From 1983 to 1992, he was with the faculty of the Electrical Engineering Department of Southern Illinois University first as an Assistant and then Associate Professor. In 1989 he joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the Pennsylvania State University, on leave from Southern Illinois University, and remained in the faculty of Penn State University until 1996. In 1995 he co-founded Intelnet Inc., a start-up hi-tech company specializing in biometrics, information management and access control systems, and data mining applications, where he remained as President and CEO until 1998 when he joined the National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos" (NCSRD) in Athens, Greece. Dr. Thomopoulos is currently the Director of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) and Head of the Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) at NCSRD.He is credited with over 250 publications, over 2500 citations, and the US Patent No. 5,978,495 for the design and implementation of a fingerprint recognition system. He participated in numerous US, EU and nationally funded projects and as a premier consultant and advisor to the US Air Force Predetection Fusion Program. He has led or participated in over 47 research projects, totaling over 124 million Euro in total funding from European, Greece and USA, including the FP7 flagship projects OPTITRANS, PERSEUS and EUCISE2020 and H2020 FLYSEC and TRESSPASS. He has been consulting for the government and private industry in the US, France and Greece. His Generalized Evidence Processing (GEP) theory has been cited in all three most recent books on Data Fusion and his Sensor Fusion theory as one of the fundamental theories in sensor networks by the NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology wireless communication technologies group.From 2002-2004 he served as the first representative of Greece in the ESA ARTES program.

Speaker      Presentation: FLYSEC System Overview and Implementation Highlights

Biography: 

Dr. Dimitris M. Kyriazanos received his Diploma in 2005 and his Ph.D. degree in 2009 both in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. From 2005 to 2008 he worked as a Research Assistant in the Institute of Communication & Computer Systems (ICCS) and as a Teaching Assistant in the ECE School of NTUA. In 2006 he joined and remains since with the Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) of the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT), in the National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” (NCSRD) in Athens, Greece, as a Research Assistant up to 2009, then as a Research Associate up to his election and appointment as Research Assistant Professor (June 2018). He has obtained significant European Commission (EC) research grants in the challenging areas of preparedness for and management of large scale forest fires (FP7 Integration Project AF3), airport security (FLYSEC DRS-16-2014) and risk based screening at border crossing (TRESSPASS SEC-15-BES-2017) -having acted as Coordinator in the latter two. He has extensive research work in the context of EC Research projects, having participated in more than 14 successfully completed projects since FP6, contributing to the development of a wide range of innovative prototype security management systems, applications and services, while publishing the results of his work in scientific journals, international conferences and book chapters. His research interests include integrated security management and command and control systems, risk based security, automated decision making, indoor location based services, data fusion, data protection and PETs, privacy and ethics by design and other topics. He is an active member of the European and international community of researchers, professionals and end users working jointly in the area of secure and resilient societies, participating in multiple bodies and advisory boards as a known expert in the area.

Dr David Naveh, currently a Research Associate at the University of Luxembourg, has had a long mixed career of university teaching (public administration, behavioural studies and economics), senior government official (international economic and security affairs) as well as a consultant on business and project development, mostly in the security area. Dr. Naveh has had a close involvement with the EU security research program when it was still a preparatory action and was involved with numerous consortia. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MA in Public Administration from Tel Aviv University and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Connecticut.

Biography: 

István Böröcz, LLM (♂) is a researcher at the research group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS). He is a member of the Brussels Laboratory for Data Protection & Privacy Impact Assessments (d.pia.lab). He obtained his LLM in Law and Technology at Tilburg University (2016) and his postgraduate specialist diploma in information and communication technology law at the University of Pécs (2015). He obtained his law degree (JD) at the University of Pécs (2013). He is interested in the notion of risk to the rights and freedoms of the individual along with the legal, theoretical and practical issues of Human Enhancement Technologies (HETs), with special focus on cognitive enhancement. He is involved in several EU co-funded research projects, such as PERSONA, STAR, MaTHiSiS, FORENSOR, SUCCESS and PARENT. He is a member of the ethical advisory board of the H2020 project CUIDAR.

Biography: 

Anastasia Garbi (Dipl. Ing. MSc, MBA), has obtained a diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering, from the National Technical University of Athens in 1996 and an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from University of York, Uk, in 1997, and an MBA from National Technical University of Athens in 2002. She joined European Dynamics in October 2013, to lead business development for the Research and Development dept. She has experience in researching, designing and developing software solutions in various business domains.

Biography: 

Dr. Raúl Sevilla, currently researcher at the Homeland Security & Defence group in Atos. Raul has a long mixed career of software developer, aeronautics consultor as well as project manager. He holds a PhD in Physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2010), specialized in high-performance computing and data analysis. Since then, Raul has involved in several positions regarding aeronautics, leading projects in aircraft operations and methods. Since joining Atos Research & Innovation (2014), he had a significant role in several EU co-funded research projects, e.g. DRIVER, BODEGA, CIVILNEXT and PERSONA; and coordinated a number of proposal for the H2020 programme. His current research focuses on Big Data and Machine Learning applications to risk modelling and integrated security management.

Project Presentation

The EU FP7 project XP-DITE (2012-2017) deals with aviation security checkpoints for passengers and belongings and has developed a comprehensive, passenger-centred, outcome-focused, system-level approach to the design and evaluation of airport security checkpoints.

In XP-DITE the necessary conceptual framework was developed, as well as checkpoint design and evaluation tools. A novel approach was used to defining and calculating system-level security performance, and an ethical framework was developed to quantify ethical factors involved in checkpoint design and evaluation. Selected checkpoint detection technology development was supported by XP-DITE to help show the importance of whole system performance over isolated equipment performance. The approach and tools have been demonstrated and evaluated in laboratory and operational airport trials. One trial on Shannon Airport paved the way for combining its separate EU and US preclearance checkpoints into a single security checkpoint operation for passengers travelling to the USA.

The XP-DITE vision is that security regulation and policy should and will evolve towards an outcome based, system level and risk based paradigm, but the approach and tools developed in the project can already be used within the current regulatory framework.

The XP-DITE approach allows airports, checkpoint designers and regulators to incorporate a wide range of requirements and evaluate checkpoint performance against system-level security, cost, throughput, passenger satisfaction and ethical factors. Regulators can use the tools to perform “what-if” scenarios to calculate the impact of potential changes in regulations, for example to respond to new and evolving threats. Airport operators can use the methods to design customer friendly, efficient checkpoints, optimized to the needs of their business and designed to cope with change. Equipment Manufacturers may use outcomes to facilitate innovation and introduction of new technologies by focusing on the added value for the whole checkpoint system. And last but not least, as a result passengers can experience fewer delays and improved convenience whilst ensuring they are kept safe.

Moving to an outcome-focused, risk-based, system-level security regulation will be a major change for the aviation sector.  XP-DITE is a step in this process and should start to give both regulators and industry confidence that it can be achieved.

The XP-DITE project has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement No 285311.

Biography:

Mr. Jaap de Ruiter studied experimental physics and has been active in this field of detection for over 20 years. He initiated and developed explosives and contraband detection activities at TNO and as project manager and specialist he contributed to many international research projects. Jaap has long been an active member of ECAC (European Civil Aviation Conference). ECAC since 2007 runs the European testing of civil aviation security equipment and TNO is one of the designated test centres. He chaired the Security Scanners Studygroup and was involved in development of many testing methods. Jaap co-chaired several conferences such as Isade, Gordon Research Conference, EUCDE and Aerodays. He recently served 2 years as seconded national expert in the European Commission Joint Research Centre, and has been frequently involved in exchange meetings between US, EU, ECAC and EU member states on aviation security standards and testing. He was the Technical Coordinator of the European FP7 XP-DITE project. Jaap is now senior consultant on detection and security at TNO.

Project Presentation

The creation of the Schengen area has been one of the major achievements of the EU. However, this agreement requires countries to cooperate tightly in order to keep a high level of security at their internal borders, as well as to share the responsibility of managing external borders. Such a variety of borders (land, sea and air) and current challenges requires a consistent approach to border surveillance, based on a plethora of heterogeneous assets. These can be manned or unmanned, ranging from sensors (optical, radar, IR) to unmanned platforms (UAV, UGV, USV or UUV), and need to be combined to offer an integrated situational picture of the area under surveillance and of their location. In order to effectively control their operation and manage the large amounts of data collected by them, new approaches for command and control need to be considered, allowing efficient interaction between the operator and the different assets in the field. CAMELOT proposes to develop and demonstrate different advanced command and control service modules for multiple platform domains, based on a SOA architecture that specifies internal and external interfaces, allowing the development of a modular and scalable command and control station, customisable to the user needs. This architecture can be based on results of previous studies and work or open architectures that may prove more suitable and the interfaces can take advantage of the standardisation work that has been done already. After the definition, CAMELOT partners will prototype service modules according to their expertise, background individual technologies and practitioner needs. These will be integrated progressively in specific testing along the project. This prototype development approach will culminate in 2 final demonstrations involving end users and relevant stakeholders, to achieve a maturity of TRL6 (for most individual technologies supporting the functionalities for border surveillance) and an IRL of 7 for CAMELOT.

Biography: 

Alex Bensenousi (M) holds a 5-year Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering  from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He graduated  in the top 5% of his class in the sector of Power Electronics and he is an expert in Electrical Power Engineering. Moreover, he is an MBA candidate in Blekinge institute of technology and he has also participated in various projects including Internet of Things and Embedded Systems and joined EXODUS innovation in 2017 as a Research Project Manager. Mr. Bensenousi  won the Greek Chess Championship twice and enjoys smart, simple and efficient solutions in any area of Electrical and Software Engineering. His current research focus on Security and Energy projects and he is a member of EXODUS IoT and Embedded Systems Laboratory.