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Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

rfid experts - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

RFID has quietly become the invisible backbone of modern logistics, retail, and identity systems — and behind its rise is a brilliant, global community of innovators.

This includes pioneering biohackers, legendary authors, open-source hackers, award-winning professors, and tech founders building the future of passive IoT. From securing supply chains and cracking cryptographic tags to implanting chips under their own skin, these experts have redefined what’s possible with RFID. Below is a curated list of some of the most influential and publicly active figures in the RFID space today, each selected for their enduring contributions, technical leadership, and unique impact on the ecosystem:

  1. Amal Graafstra
  2. Antonio Rizzi
  3. Mark Roberti
  4. Katina Michael
  5. Adam Laurie
  6. Klaus Finkenzeller
  7. Christian Herrmann
  8. Steve Halliday
  9. Justin Patton
  10. Karsten Nohl
  11. Daniel Dobkin
  12. Melanie Rieback
  13. Steve Statler
  14. Tal Tamir

Now, let’s delve deeper into their profiles and contributions.

Amal Graafstra

YouTube Video

Nationality: American

Amal Graafstra is a biohacking pioneer known for implanting RFID microchips in his hands and promoting RFID for personal use.

He installed his first implant in 2005 and wrote the book RFID Toys sharing DIY projects with RFID. Graafstra founded Dangerous Things (2013), the first company selling implantable NFC/RFID tags to hobbyists, and later co-founded VivoKey Technologies to develop secure, cryptographic implants. He has demoed opening doors, starting cars, and logging into computers with a wave of his hand. A frequent TEDx speaker and media contributor, Graafstra advocates for “augmenting” oneself responsibly. His work has made bio-implants a visible part of the RFID world, inspiring a community of thousands of grinders and body hackers using implantable tags for access and payments.

Antonio Rizzi

Nationality: Italian

Professor Antonio Rizzi is a globally recognized expert in RFID for supply-chain and industrial logistics. He is a Full Professor at the University of Parma in Italy and the founder/director of the University’s RFID Lab, established in 2006.

Under Rizzi’s leadership, the RFID Lab Parma was one of the first research centers to pilot UHF Gen2 RFID tags in retail and fast-moving consumer goods – it notably worked on the RFID trials with Gillette and METRO Group in the mid-2000s that proved item-level tagging could work in practice. Prof. Rizzi’s lab has since partnered with major brands to implement RFID in fashion, pharmaceutical, and food supply chains, often focusing on improving inventory visibility and traceability.

He has authored 150+ papers and contributed to EPCglobal standards. In 2025, Antonio Rizzi received the RFID Journal Live Special Achievement Award for his pioneering work in RFID research and education. He remains an active evangelist for RFID’s role in a smarter, more sustainable supply chain, and he frequently speaks at industry events to share findings from academia with businesses.

Mark Roberti

Mark Roberti - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

Nationality: American

Mark Roberti is the founder of RFID Journal, the first media outlet devoted to RFID, which he launched in 2002 from his spare bedroom.

Over two decades as editor, Roberti built RFID Journal into the leading source of RFID news, case studies, and industry events worldwide. He also created the annual RFID Journal LIVE! conference, fostering a global community of RFID practitioners. Widely regarded as an unbiased RFID authority, Roberti has interviewed hundreds of end users and experts, chronicling RFID’s evolution from early pilots to mass adoption. After selling RFID Journal in 2016, he continues to advise companies on RFID strategy through his consultancy. Roberti’s journalism and advocacy earned him a reputation as one of the most influential voices in the RFID and IoT industry.

Katina Michael

Just because we can implant technology doesn’t mean we should. We need to consider the long-term implications of becoming trackable under the skin.

Nationality: Australian-Greek

Dr. Katina Michael is a professor and influential voice on the social and ethical implications of RFID technology. With a background in information systems, she has extensively studied microchip implants in humans and coined the term “uberveillance” to describe the comprehensive tracking of individuals via technology.

Michael was among the first scholars to examine the societal risks of implantable RFID/NFC chips, convening workshops and writing about potential privacy and security issues. In a 2018 IEEE interview, she discussed with an NFC implant early-adopter the pitfalls of biohacking hype and argued that human microchipping is a “bad idea” with limited benefits.

Michael has served as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine and is an active contributor to IEEE SSIT, blending technical knowledge with public policy. Now a professor at Arizona State University, she continues to mentor students and publish research on emerging technologies and their governance.

Adam Laurie

Adam Laurie - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

Nationality: British

Adam “Major Malfunction” Laurie is a British security researcher who was one of the earliest hackers of RFID systems. He authored RFIDIOt (RFIDIO and Tools), an open-source Python library for exploring and exploiting RFID and NFC devices.

Through RFIDIOt and his presentations at hacker conferences (DEF CON, Black Hat, etc.), Laurie exposed vulnerabilities in smartcards, passports, and building access badges. He demonstrated cloning of HID access cards and eavesdropping on RFID payment tokens well before such attacks were mainstream. Laurie also co-developed the RFIDler project (software-defined 125kHz reader) and has been a DEF CON Goon for years. His contributions – from code to talks – have equipped countless professionals and hobbyists with the tools to test and understand RFID security.

Klaus Finkenzeller

Nationality: German

Klaus Finkenzeller is famously “the man who wrote the book on RFID.” He authored the RFID Handbook, first published in 1999, which remains one of the most comprehensive and trusted references on contactless card and RFID technology. Finkenzeller’s work earned him the 2008 Fraunhofer Smart Card Award for its outstanding contribution to the field. An electrical engineer by training, he was deeply involved in developing early HF RFID and NFC applications at Giesecke+Devrient.

He contributed to ISO 14443 and ISO 15693 standards for contactless cards and vicinity tags. Finkenzeller later joined Elatec GmbH as Innovation Manager, where he guides development of advanced RFID reader modules. With over 20 years in RFID, he is an active expert on everything from RF physics and antenna design to cryptographic security mechanisms in smartcards. Finkenzeller is frequently invited to lecture and has a talent for explaining complex RF concepts in practical terms. His RFID Handbook has educated countless engineers and is often the first book people reach for to understand RFID fundamentals.

Christian Herrmann

Christian Herrmann - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

Nationality: German

Christian Herrmann, known by the handle “Iceman”, is a leading figure in the RFID hacking community. He is co-founder of the RFID Research Group (RRG) and the principal maintainer of the Proxmark3 project – the popular open-source RFID/NFC pentesting device.

Herrmann’s custom Iceman firmware for the Proxmark3 vastly expanded its capabilities to clone and emulate countless high-frequency and low-frequency tags (from office badges to payment fobs). He also helped create the ChameleonMini rebooted firmware and has contributed to dozens of RFID attack tools. As an active trainer and speaker (e.g. at DEF CON, BSides), Iceman teaches others how to assess and exploit RFID systems. His passion and deep knowledge of RFID security have made advanced techniques (like eavesdropping, relays, brute-forcing keys) accessible to the broader infosec community.

Steve Halliday

Nationality: British

Steve Halliday is a veteran of the automatic identification industry and a key figure in RFID standardization. Involved with RFID and barcode technologies since 1980, Halliday served as the vice president of technology at AIM Global and later formed his own consultancy, High Tech Aid. He has chaired the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC31 subcommittee, which defines international RFID standards for air interfaces and data formatting, for many years.

Halliday also co-chaired the EPCglobal Hardware Action Group, driving the creation of the EPC Gen2 protocol adopted by industry. He was instrumental in harmonizing different RFID frequencies and protocols into unified standards. In 2014, Halliday became the first president of the RAIN RFID Alliance, helping to grow UHF RFID adoption globally. He received AIM’s 2010 Richard R. Dilling Award for lifetime achievement in AIDC. Today, through High Tech Aid and RFID Traxx, he continues to help companies deploy RFID and asset tracking solutions. Halliday’s four decades of leadership and technical expertise have directly shaped the RFID landscape we have today.

Justin Patton

Nationality: American

Justin Patton is the Executive Director of the Auburn University RFID Lab, one of the world’s leading academic centers for RFID innovation in retail. He has led the RFID Lab for over 10 years, working closely with industry giants like Walmart, Amazon, and FedEx on cutting-edge RFID pilots and standards.

Patton’s efforts in the early 2010s helped prove the business case for item-level RFID in retail apparel and drove initiatives like the RFID tagging of every product in Walmart stores. In 2024, he won AIM North America’s Ted Williams Award for his contributions to RFID adoption. Patton frequently shares insights on inventory accuracy, serialization, and supply chain efficiency gained from Auburn’s research. He also mentors students through hands-on projects at the RFID Lab, fostering the next generation of RFID talent. By straddling academia and industry application, Patton has become a key influencer guiding how RFID and related IoT technologies roll out in the real world.

Karsten Nohl

Karsten Nohl 1 - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

Nationality: German

Karsten Nohl is a German cryptography expert renowned for exposing weaknesses in widely used RFID systems. As a Ph.D. student, he demonstrated the first full crack of NXP’s Mifare Classic smart card in 2007 – a chip used in transit tickets and employee badges worldwide – by reverse-engineering its cipher with colleague Henryk Plötz.

Nohl also showed how to break the proprietary encryption in Legic Prime cards (2009) and helped reveal flaws in car immobilizer RFID transponders like DST40 and Hitag2. His University of Virginia dissertation on RFID security and privacy (2008) further cemented his expertise. In 2010, Nohl founded Security Research Labs (SRLabs) in Berlin, where as Chief Scientist he continues to research wireless and RFID security (along with mobile and SIM card security). He has received global attention for projects like cracking GSM encryption, but in the RFID realm, his work forced manufacturers to strengthen their cipher designs. Nohl is a frequent speaker at Black Hat and CCC, known for translating academic techniques into real-world hacks that spur improvement in RFID security.

Daniel Dobkin

Nationality: American

Dr. Daniel Dobkin is a distinguished engineer and author in the RFID field, best known for writing the textbook “The RF in RFID: Passive UHF RFID in Practice.” This book – now in its 2nd edition – is considered a bible of RFID engineering, cited over 700 times in academic literature for its deep technical insights.

Dobkin has 40+ years’ experience in wireless and antenna design, holding a Ph.D. in physics from Caltech. He has designed RFID reader antennas, antenna tuning circuits, and analog front-ends for companies, and has taught many courses on RFID hardware design and RF physics. He runs a consulting firm, Enigmatics, through which he advises clients on projects like near-field RFID for jewelry tracking and far-field tag antenna optimization. A prolific inventor and a sought-after conference speaker, Dobkin excels at bridging theory and practice. His contributions – especially in understanding real-world RF behavior of tags and readers – have helped countless engineers develop reliable RFID systems.

Melanie Rieback

Melanie Rieback - Best 14 RFID Experts to Watch This Year

Nationality: Dutch-American

Dr. Melanie Rieback is a computer scientist who gained fame for her groundbreaking research in RFID security. While a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she demonstrated the world’s first RFID malware – showing that RFID tags could carry viruses to backend systems.

She also developed the “RFID Guardian”, a handheld firewall device to shield consumers from unauthorized tag scanning. These projects, presented in 2006–2007, drew worldwide press and multiple awards. After academia, Rieback co-founded Radically Open Security, the first non-profit cybersecurity consultancy, where she continues to promote openness and ethics in security. She has been named among the “400 most successful women in the Netherlands” and remains a vocal advocate for privacy, often warning against human microchipping and corporate surveillance. Rieback’s early RFID hacking work opened eyes to the technology’s risks and forged a path for RFID in security research.

Steve Statler

Nationality: British

Steve Statler is a prominent evangelist for RFID and related location technologies in the industry. He is the author of Beacon Technologies: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Beacosystem, a noted book on Bluetooth beacons, and he hosts the popular Mr. Beacon podcast interviewing leaders in the RFID/IoT space.

Statler spent years as a consultant helping enterprises deploy BLE beacon and RFID solutions, and he is now SVP of Marketing at Wiliot (an IoT startup making battery-free Bluetooth tags). In that role, and on his podcast, he champions the convergence of RFID, Bluetooth, and cloud – often discussing “ambient IoT” and how tiny wireless tags (RFID or BLE) can transform supply chains. A natural communicator, Statler breaks down complex tech for broader audiences. He has become a bridge between the technical RFID community and business stakeholders, advocating for sensor-tagged, connected products as the future of retail and logistics.

Tal Tamir

Nationality: Israeli

Tal Tamir is the co-founder and CEO of Wiliot, an Israel-based startup that has pioneered sticker-sized, battery-free Bluetooth RFID tags. A veteran of the wireless industry, Tamir previously co-founded Wilocity, and in 2017 he turned his focus to passive IoT tags with Wiliot.

His team created stamp-sized tags that harvest energy from radio waves, enabling affordable “smart labels” that monitor an item’s identity and environment in real time. Under Tamir’s leadership, Wiliot has raised over $200M (led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund) to scale this technology, often dubbed “ambient IoT.” Tamir envisions trillions of everyday products getting connected via Wiliot’s cloud-connected tags, closing the information gaps in supply chains. He frequently speaks about the potential of ubiquitous sensing and has quickly positioned Wiliot as a trailblazer at the intersection of RFID and IoT. Tamir’s work is redefining what RFID tags can do – adding sensing, compute, and cloud integration while remaining inexpensive and disposable.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

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