Prof. Patrick Bours wins the NTNU Innovation Award 2023.

NTNU has seven internal awards that will give recognition to employees who contribute to promoting NTNU's strategy «Knowledge for a better world». NTNU's award for innovation and collaboration with working life (NTNU Innovation Award) shall be a recognition of innovative activities in the area of pioneering innovations, development of innovation culture, establishment of collaborative relationships with actors in working life that benefit professional environments and society. The prize is awarded to an employee or a group of staff that has contributed to promoting and making visible

• NTNU's goals for research-based innovation, entrepreneurship, innovation and / or
• cooperation with society and business

The jury of this award were Prof. Monica Rolfsen (Dean, OK faculty), Cathrine Taylor Nordgård (Vice-Dear Innovation, NV faculty) and Jesper Aagard Pettersen (Vice-Dean Research, SU faculty). The jury evaluated 5 strong nominations and selected Prof. Patrick Bours as winner for his long-term research and activities related to behavioural biometrics and authentication, including the development of the company Aiba AS.

Founded on a calling to make the internet a safer place Professor Patrick Bours have always  had an “outside of the box” mindset, searching for new angles in problem solving. Pioneering the topic of Insertion/ Deletion correcting codes and working on asymmetric cryptography for the Netherlands National Communication Security Agency (NLNCSA). As a PostDoc researcher at NTNU Patrick once again chose the lesser traveled path, focusing on behavioural biometrics, initially working on gait recognition. Soon after he changed focus to keystroke dynamics: recognizing people by their typing rhythm. A sextorition story with a tragic outcome sparked Patrick’s interest in 2016. Fourteen-year-old Amanda Todd met an adult male online, pretending to be an eighteen-year-old boy. She was later extorted and harassed with the threat of exposing intimate photographs she had shared. Knowing that keystroke dynamics could tell something about the age and gender of a person, the idea of AiBA was born. This could warn children about fake profiles and detect sexual predators in chatrooms. It was quickly discovered though, that sexual predators don’t always fake their age or gender. They sometimes simply ask if a child is ok with talking to an older person. – Making a warning about the users age void. Since then, the focus moved to detection of predatory conversations based on text. This was already a topic high on the research agenda in 2012, but all research was done from a forensic point of view; analyzing full conversations after the fact. Useful for investigations but not preventive. Based on the idea of a proactive system, Patrick’s research has mainly been on early detection of cyber grooming conversations with two main goals in mind: As early detection as possible while maintaining privacy. Major progress has been made on both goals with AiBA: only the last message in a conversation is analyzed at any time and on average only 20 lines of text are needed to detect a predatory conversation.

Fra venstre instituttleder Einar M. Rønquist, professor Edgar Hertwich, professor Aslak Steinsbekk, førsteamanuensis Hild Fjærtoft, rektor Anne Borg, professor Patrick Bours, Kam Sripada, leder for Senter for digitalt liv Norge og førsteamanuensis Thomas Richard Hilder. Foto: Thor Nielsen/NTNU