The year’s most influential individuals in the auto ID Community crowned at the prestigious ceremony in Milan.
The winners of this year’s ID People Awards – the Oscars of the Auto ID industry – were revealed on November 26th during the sixth ID WORLD International Congress in Milan. At the annual ceremony, awards were presented in recognition of the contribution made by thought leaders, innovators and pioneering adopters who distinguished themselves by their achievements during the past 12 months. 

The Big Five

Five awards were handed out following nomination and voting by the ID Community, who have supported the initiative with enthusiasm during the last few months. More than 3,500 votes were collected in the three-week election phase. The categories and winners are: 
·         ID Community Award: Dr. Detlef Houdeau, Head of Business Development for RFID Components and Solutions at Infineon and member of Eurosmart, for his expertise on the application aims, relevant standards and specifications, legal conditions, and the rollout schedules of the many different citizen ID projects taking place worldwide and for his constant effort in promoting the sharing of experiences among government agencies in different countries. This year’s ID Community Award was presented by Roberto Tavano, Partner and Vice President of the European Security Programme at Unisys and winner of the ID Leadership Award 2006 in Milan.
·       ID Leadership Award: Jan Kretzschmer, Director for Airport Solutions at Lyngsoe Systems, for his role in fostering the adoption of RFID-based solutions in the aviation industry and his leadership in the implementation of the world’s first RFID-on-baggage solution for Hong Kong Airport. This year’s ID Leadership Award was presented by Tom Miller, Principal of Stinsights and winner of the ID Leadership Award 2004 in Barcelona. 

• ID Limelight Award: Roberto Tunioli, CEO of Datalogic, the very dynamic Italian company that made headlines for the acquisition of PSC last year, for focusing the attention of the media on the transformation of a mid-size Italian company into one of the largest and best-known multi-national enterprises in the field of automatic data collection. This year’s ID Limelight Award was presented by Joseph Krull, Senior Manager of Security at Accenture and winner of the ID Community Award 2005 in Rome.

·         ID Trail Blazer Award: Remy de Tonnac, CEO of Inside Contactless, for his vision on the future of NFC and for his efforts to help build the NFC ecosystem to support the creativity of developers and help them achieve the flurry of applications that will make NFC technology the basis of a new "mobile way of life". This year’s ID Trail Blazer Award was presented by Ali Al-Khouri, Deputy Director General of the Emirates Identity Authority, UAE, and winner of the ID Outstanding Achievement Award 2006 in Milan.

·         ID Outstanding Achievement Award: Brig. Ahmed Nasser Al Raisi, General Director Operations of Abu Dhabi Police, for the state-of-the-art iris recognition based border control solution implemented in United Arab Emirates, the introduction of smart card technology for the country’s identity verification projects and his outstanding leadership in developing Abu Dhabi Police into an extremely effective force operating in one of the world’s safest countries. This year’s ID Outstanding Achievement Award was presented by Brig. Saleem Ahmed Moeen, Chairman of Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority and winner of the ID Outstanding Achievement Award 2005 in Rome.

Honorary Awards

During the ceremony, tribute was paid to a young talent and to a person whose lifelong achievements gave an outstanding contribution to fostering the market penetration of advanced auto ID based solutions. Alongside the traditional Big Five elected by the community, the following awards were presented:

·         ID Talent Award: created in memory of teenage technology pioneer Derek Jacobs, who tragically died in a motorcycle accident last year at only 18. This year’s ID Talent Award was presented by Michael Feder, Senior Vice President of Verichip. The award was presented to Usman Yousaf Mobin, who, at only 28, is already Chief Technology Officer at Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has gained renown as the Architect of the Pakistan Passport System, the world’s first multi-biometric electronic passport system employing both fingerprint identification and face recognition technologies. Usman Yousaf Mobin is the inventor of a technique that has made possible remarkably fast phonetics-based searches on multilingual identity databases.

·         ID Hall of Fame: Van Tran, CEO of Veritec, was inducted into the Hall of Fame for guiding the company to steady growth and the development of state-of-the-art solutions based on two-dimensional matrix symbologies for positive biometric ID. The ID Hall of Fame recognizes the lifetime achievements of outstanding individuals in the ID Community. This year’s ID Hall of Fame was presented by Sertac Ozinal, CEO of BKM Interbank Card Center of Turkey, Honorable Mention Global Security Forum 2006 in Milan.

Three Honorable Mentions

Wise Media’s ID WORLD Events Team presented Honorable Mention awards to three distinguished leaders in the ID Community:

·         Honorable Mention Electronic Passport Forum: Dr. Khalid Al-Tawil, head of the National Information Center (NIC) in Saudi Arabia, for his many accomplishments in the field of ID and in particular his important contributions to efforts being made in the Middle East to counter terrorism through secure identity solutions.

·         Honorable Mention Asset Tracking Forum: Antti Korhonen, CEO of Ekahau, for his work in pioneering the adoption of wi-fi based Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS). Under Antti Korhonen's lead, Ekahau has grown rapidly thanks to the introduction of the third ‘killer app’ for wi-fi after data and voice: location & tracking.

·         Honorable Mention Transportation Security Forum: Steven Brill, founder and CEO of Verified Identity Pass, for his work in creating ‘Clear’, the largest US registered traveler program, which uses fingerprint and iris technology to identify members who move through its fast pass lanes at more than a dozen major US airports, including New York’s JFK and San Francisco International.