MARLIN Project

Funded in 2022 – The Vietsch Foundation announces a new grant to fund the MARLIN project, to support “Reliable user identification to grant access to local resources as well as secure remote access to scientific content”. The project was relayed to the Vietsch Foundation by GÉANT through its Innovation Programme.

Universities, research institutes and schools offer researchers and students a variety of local resources (class rooms, multimedia rooms, meeting rooms, libraries, etc.), specific equipment, and services, such print and scan. 

Eduroam provides end users with access to the Wi-Fi local networks, but doesn’t provide access to restricted locations, such as a multimedia room, for example. Moreover, this doesn’t allow users to access local resources, such a simple printing services, of a remote institution they happen to be hosted at.

The project promises to develop a novel way to access local resources using secure authentication and authorization mechanisms, together with the ability to acknowledge the user’s identity, using biometric data though smart devices, which most of the users carry in their pockets on a daily basis. 

The project runs for one year and will result in a prototype with the following features: 

  1. Secure access to content (university intranet portal) with ability to author document with verified user’s identity
  2. Access institution local resources 
    • Using a printer in a 3rd party institution where the user is temporary located 
    • Access a restricted room (laboratory) in a 3rd party institution where the user is temporary located 

The prototype is going to be tested and implemented at the Laboratory of Telematics of the Bulgaria Academy of Science (LT-BAS ).