The Cascade Fund is part of the Government’s programme of initiatives, implemented through the DTI, to encourage the growth of business. Together with University Technology Transfer Offices, the fund seeks to maximise the commercial potential of research from five partner universities: Brunel, Reading, Royal Holloway, Surrey & Sussex.

OmniPerception will use the funding to further the development of it’s pioneering facial biometrics, the highly sophisticated software and technology associated with the mathematical measurement and recognition of human faces. This technology has a number of commercial security applications, from border control and physical access control, to computer network access and Internet banking. With current international concerns over terrorist threats to security, facial biometric technology is particularly salient.

Unique to OmniPerception is the Affinity™ software, which is able to create a FacialPIN™ from the unique details of an individual's face. Since the software behind the FacialPIN™ technology can automatically recognise a human face and distinguish it from any other, it is like having a password so complex that nobody can memorise it, but one which the user cannot possibly forget.

"This is a financial vote of confidence for OmniPerception," comments David McIntosh, CEO, OmniPerception. "It is encouraging that the Government is supporting emergent commercial technologies through funds like Cascade. We would also like to thank Generics Asset Management for the professional regulation of the fund for us."

Dr Richard Leaver, Fund Manager for Generics Asset Management Ltd, said: "We are delighted to add OmniPerception to the Cascade portfolio. A number of the partner universities, along with Generics, have a very strong and dynamic security and biometrics base, so it was logical to invest in a company whose work complements these."

One quarter of the Cascade Fund is made up of capital from the partner universities, with the rest coming from the Office of Science & Technology, Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

OmniPerception will use the investment to grow and expand the company’s powerful in-house research and development team. Future plans also include location to larger premises and further field trials of the technology.

About OmniPerception Ltd

OmniPerception Limited is a high-tech development company founded by top research engineers from the University of Surrey's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, a world centre of excellence in its field. The company's Chairman and head of the Centre, Professor Josef Kittler was the inventor of the company's facial biometric technology, which has now been acquired by OmniPerception in the form of patents pending, know-how and the transfer of key staff to the company from the University of Surrey.

OmniPerception is working closely with Sharp Laboratories of Europe in Oxford, the Sharp Corporation's European R&D Centre, to demonstrate the capability of the Omni technology on the Sharp smart card. This powerful combination of new technologies addresses critical needs in modern identification security and has already drawn the attention of a number of other major players in the field - including IBM, Hitachi and BT.

About Generics Asset Management Ltd

Generics Asset Management Ltd (GAML) is the investment management company of The Generics Group (Generics) and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. It manages and maintains investment assets on behalf of both external investment funds and the Group. GAML invests in technology-based opportunities and aims to make investments in enterprises to which GAML or other parts of the Group can add significant value and reduce the inherent technology risk.

Generics identifies and develops emerging technologies with commercial potential, and funds and manages the exploitation of the associated intellectual property. Generics also actively explores opportunities to collaborate with third parties who have, or have access to, intellectual property in areas to which Generics believes it can add value. GAML operates from technology development facilities and sales offices in Europe, including the UK, and the USA. For more information about Generics Asset Management and The Generics Group, visit their website at: www.generics.co.uk

Company Contact:
Susan Hodgson, OmniPerception Ltd
t: +44 (0)1483 688 354
e: hodgson@omniperception.com
w: www.omniperception.com