The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China's top research body, plans to organize an international forum in October, in a bid to promote identity verification technologies.

The forum will be arranged by a physical identity verification and appraisal center of the CAS Institute of Automation.

Tan Tieniu, chief scientist of the center and head of the CAS institute, said that although they were newly developed, the identity verification technologies would prevail quickly in coming years.

He estimated that high-tech locks verified by individual iris, finger mark or DNA will take the place of ordinary ones opened by keys or PIN numbers.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, many research bodies and high-tech companies invested into development of more advanced identity verification technologies.

"The new technologies will be everywhere in less than two decades," Tan said.

The forum is expected to attract government regulators, researchers, end users and worldwide manufacturers, he said.

Tan also said he hopes a national manufacturing alliance will be established during the forum, coordinating researching and producing.

(Xinhua News Agency September 14, 2003)