(11 February 2016) Professor Mauro Barni, from the Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Siena, is the recipient of the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP) Technical Achievement Award, a prestigious prize dedicated to scholars who distinguished themselves for their significant scientific activity, research and applied research. Professor Barni will be officially awarded the Prize in Budapest in the coming months for his “contributions in digital watermarking, in digital security and forensic computer science”. In the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Siena, Barni coordinates the activities of the Visual Information Processing and Protection group (VIPP), dealing with image and video processing for copyright protection by means of electronic tagging techniques, authentication of multimedia content and processing of encrypted signals. “The analysis of the authenticity and the origin of images and videos available in electronic format – explains Professor Barni – is of particular importance due to the increasing use of such content by means of commonly used devices such as tablets and mobile phones. The ease with which digital images and videos can be manipulated without leaving obvious traces raises increasing doubts about the authenticity of these sources of information. Through our study, we aim to develop methodologies to determine the origin of these images and identify possible manipulations”.
