Title Watermarking: Quo Vadis?

Abstract : The latest surge in watermarking research, technology and applications started around 1995. It is undeniable that great progress was made, and we now have a much better understanding of watermarking, data-hiding and steganography. Moreover, watermarking research led to the development of a number of new interesting research areas (e.g. robust identification). It also contributed to new insights in other security disciplines (e.g. biometric security). However, what lies ahead for watermarking as a research discipline? Are there still fundamental questions that need to be solved? Or are we at a dead end, with only marginal improvements to be expected? In this talk, I will give my personal view on these questions.

Bio : Ton Kalker is VP of Technology at the Huawei Innovation Center, Santa Clara, leading the research on next generation Media Technologies. He made significant contributions to the field of media security, in particular digital watermarking, robust media identification and interoperability of Digital Rights Managements systems. His history in this field of research started in 1996, submitting and participating in the standardization of video watermarking for DVD copy protection. His solution was accepted as the core technology for the proposed DVD copy protection standard and earned him the title of Fellow of the IEEE. His subsequent research focused on robust media identification, where he laid the foundation of the Content Identification business unit of Philips Electronics, successful in commercializing watermarking and other identification technologies. In his Philips period he has co-authored 30 patents and 39 patent applications. His interests are in the field of signal and audio-visual processing, media security, biometrics, information theory and cryptography.

Ton joined Huawei in December 2010. Prior to Huawei, he was with Hewlett-Packard in for six years, focusing on the problem of non-interoperability of DRM systems. He became one of the three lead architects of the Coral consortium, publishing a standard framework for DRM interoperability in the summer of 2007. He also participates actively in the academic community, through students, publications, keynotes, lectures, membership in program committees and serving as conference chair. He is a co-founder of the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics. He is the former chair of the associated Technical Committee of Information Forensics and Security. He served for 6 years as visiting faculty at the University of Eindhoven.