Biography

Steven Simske is an HP Fellow and a Director for the Printing and Life Sciences Portfolios in HP Labs. He is an IS&T Fellow and an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham. Steve has been a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils since 2010, including Illicit Trade, Illicit Economy and the Future of Electronics. He is the author of more than 400 publications and roughly 150 US patents, and in 2013 wrote the book “Meta-Algorithmics” which addresses many aspects of intelligent systems. Prior to HP, Simske Steve was a faculty member at the University of Colorado, Regis University, Colorado School of Mines, and Colorado State University. He holds a BS in biomedical engineering from Marquette University, an MS in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic University, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Colorado where he was also a postdoctoral fellow in aerospace engineering.

Abstract

In this lecture, I give an overview of security printing, including a 15-year historical perspective focused on variable data printing (VDP), the core engine to effective countermeasures to counterfeiting of branded/labeled goods. Among the security printing approaches, I will cover color & progressive barcodes, the image based forensic service, the global product authentication service, other product recall and authentication services, and VDP security features such as microtext, guilloches and other graphical alphanumerics, and void pantographs. I close with the future of illicit economy prevention by describing multi-VDP workflows, illuminating the relationship between tracking, authentication, forensics and inspection.