Rachelle Sellung is a two-time Kim Cameron Award winner, and in 2024 she participated in our selection committee to choose this year’s awardees. We’re grateful to Rachelle for all of her contributions – read on to learn more about her experience at EIC 2024.
My experience with the Kim Cameron Award has offered me many opportunities for my research especially when it comes to working with the industry or other thought makers in Identity. I was lucky enough to be recognized for my research in the first two years that the Kim Cameron Award was presented by the Open Identity Foundation in 2022 and 2023. This year, I had the opportunity to be a reviewer of the candidates and provide my insights on the future award winners. I felt honored to be asked to give back to this program. When I reflect on how it has helped me along my career, I can only wish this upon future award winners. I am grateful for the EIC Conference ticket that I was given by the Digital Identity Advancement Foundation for my part in the reviewing process.
For a quick background story, I am a researcher in the field of Identity Management in the department of Human-Technology Interaction at Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. Recently, a lot of my research has been about improving the user experience and understanding user requirements in regard to new technologies impacting identity services or products. I have gained a lot of experience working on publicly funded research projects and attending academic conferences. However, this allowed me the opportunity to view vital topics in Identity Management from more of an Industry perspective and see how we could work together on challenges we both see and face.
It was enlightening to see what innovative topics, questions, and ideas are being presented at the EIC the last three years. This year I enjoyed starting off the conference by learning more about IDpro and their initiative on establishing a Body of Knowledge to provide material for those in the in the field or starting off in the topic. This inspired me to brainstorm which topics that I have done extensive research on that could potentially also be helpful or interesting for this initiative. In addition, I enjoyed learning more about different impressions and developments of Generative AI. Given that I have been apart of many EU and German Funded projects that were apart of public sector initiatives related to eIDAS or the EU digital wallet projects, it was interesting to see the feedback and response by those in the audience at the EIC.
By having this chance to attend the EIC 2024, I was not only able to reconnect with colleagues in the field but to build new connections that I look forward to keeping in touch with and working together on challenges and developments in the identity space. I strongly believe these connections can help build the necessary bridges between academics and the industry across the globe.