On 4 March 2026, Dr Jonathan Boyle from the University of Reading represented the EINSTEIN project at the 16th Norwegian Biometrics Laboratory Annual Workshop (NBLAW 2026), an event organised by the Norwegian Biometrics Laboratory (NBL) in collaboration with the European Association for Biometrics (EAB). The workshop, themed Trustworthiness in Biometrics – Explainability, Fairness, and Regulations, brought together researchers and practitioners from across Europe to discuss transparency, interpretability, bias, and regulatory compliance in the deployment of biometric technologies.
Dr Boyle’s talk, titled “Beyond the Numbers: Morphing Attack Detection, Quality Assessment and the Explainability Challenge Towards Trustworthy Face Recognition in Online ID Issuance”, addressed one of the key security and trustworthiness challenges in modern identity systems: the threat of morphing attacks, where multiple facial images are blended together to deceive automated facial recognition systems. Drawing on work carried out within the EINSTEIN project, the presentation covered the project’s data collection efforts, its ENCHANTER morphing attack detection framework developed at the University of Reading, and the critical — but still largely unsolved — challenge of making detection decisions explainable to border guards, case officers, and courts. Dr Boyle highlighted how factors such as image quality, sensor variation, and demographic fairness all intersect in real-world identity issuance pipelines, and underscored the growing regulatory pressure from legislation such as the EU AI Act.