Speakers 2022 – Session I
Aleksandrs Cepilovs
Capability Building Officer eu-LISA
Dr Aleksandrs Cepilovs is a research officer at the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA) and a research fellow at Tallinn University of Technology, where he obtained his PhD in Public Administration/Technology Governance. Previously he has worked as a research fellow and project manager at Tallinn University of Technology and was a civil servant in Latvia.
Lisa MacDonald
Director, Identity Capabilities Management Division
Lisa MacDonald is the Director of the Identity Capabilities Management Division (ICMD) in the Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), within the Management Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Ms MacDonald leads OBIM’s strategy, privacy, policy, external affairs, customer relations, acquisition, and related functions, in support of OBIM’s role as the lead entity in DHS for biometric services that enable DHS and mission
partner operations. A 2018 Women in Biometrics award winner, Ms MacDonald has more
than twenty-five years of professional experience spanning both public and private sector
organizations.
Nael Samha
Acting Executive Director, Targeting and Analysis Systems Program Directorate
Among different positions, Nael has served as CBP’s Subject Matter Expert for all passenger travel data – Advance Passenger Information Systems and Passenger Name Record. He also served as CBP’s Lead and Subject Matter Technical Expert for designing, implementing and deploying the first government Biometrics enabled passenger systems and Traveller Verification Service (TVS) across all modes of travel (Air, Land and Sea). He is known as, strategic IT executive with over 18 years’ experience leading the design, development and implementation of high-performance technology solutions.
Mikko Hakkarainen
Policy Officer, European Commission
Mikko Hakkarainen works as policy officer in the Unit for Schengen and External Borders in the European Commission, dealing with document security policy and legislation. He has previously held positions in the field of migration and home affairs at both national and EU level, from visas and travel documents to irregular migration and border management. A lawyer by training and fascinated by technological capabilities, Mr Hakkarainen gets fired up about the big horizontal themes of security, data protection and digitalisation.
Istvan Racz
Senior Information Technology Officer – Product management
Graduated as computer scientist and mathematician with a master degree in artificial intelligence, Istvan started working for multinational companies in the domain of robotics and data warehouse analytics, playing roles from software architecture up to IT management. After 10 years’ of active career in the private domain, he joined the European Commission as Project Manager in 2009. He was later appointed Head of Sector and responsibility for the European Commission’s central Asset Management System portfolio. In 2012, he joined the first team building up eu-LISA as a new agency. From 2019, he is the Product Owner for the Shared Biometric Matching Service (sBMS) currently under eu-LISA’s development.
Markus Münzel
Head of Unit Smart Borders – Federal Office for Information Security, Germany
Markus Münzel works at the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) as head of unit Smart Borders. He holds a master’s degree in business informatics and spent part of his studies at the university of Turku in Finland. This team at BSI is focusing on identity management with a focus on its data driven monitoring and the interplay between biometrics, machine authentication of documents and business processes.