Dr. Nick van der Merwe
Dr. Nick van der Merwe obtained his BSc degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Cape Town in 1991, and was awarded his PhD in Engineering by the same institution in 1995. His thesis was on an image matching scheme for use in the field of close-range photogrammetry.
He started work at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), of which he was a bursary holder, in May 1995. Here he progressed at the Division of Information and Communications Technology from software developer to project engineer and project manager; and finally to embryo business manager for an embryo biometrics business.
Dr. Nick van der Merwe is currently Director: Technology & Business Development at Ideco Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of the JSE Alt-X listed Ideco Group Limited, which is a local BEE company based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ideco specializes in Biometric Identity Management (BIDM) solutions and systems integration. Nick has been with Ideco since February 2004 and has been mainly involved with biometrics-based projects in the public sector. In December 2004 he was appointed as Manager: Technology and R&D at Ideco, in August 2006 he became Group Technology Manager and in January 2008 he was appointed as Director: Technology & Business Development. During his time at Ideco Nick has mainly been involved in the implementation of large-scale fingerprint identification and verification solutions, mostly in the government sector. Nick was also closely involved with the Back Record Conversion (BRC) project for the Home Affairs National Identification System (HANIS) for the Department of Home Affairs, a project that was successfully completed by Ideco in September 2006, months ahead of schedule.
Nick has been convenor of the South African technical workgroup on biometrics, StanSA SC71J/WG1 (Biometrics), since its inception in August 2002, and has been head of the South African delegation to ISO/IEC JTC1 SC37 workgroup meetings and plenaries ever since. This workgroup also hosted the SC37 workgroups and plenary at Sun City in South Africa at the end of June 2005, and Nick was chairman of the organizing committee for this international event. Nick was also part of the drafting committee for the South African workshop agreement ARP 054: “Data format for the interchange of fingerprint information”, and is a regular speaker on the topic of biometrics at local and international conferences.
