Biometrics: When Technology Meets the Real-World
Biometrics is the science of recognizing individuals based on their physical and behavioral attributes such as fingerprints, face, iris, voice and gait. The past decade has witnessed tremendous progress in this field, including the deployment of biometric solutions in diverse applications such as border security, national ID cards, amusement parks, access control, and smartphones. Despite these advancements, biometric systems have to contend with a number of challenges related to data quality, spoof attacks, and personal privacy. This talk will highlight some of the recent progress made in the field of biometrics; present our lab’s work on topics such as presentation attack detection, privacy-enhancing techniques, and synthetic biometrics; and discuss some of the challenges that have to be solved in order to avail the benefits of this technology.
Speaker Biography
Arun Ross is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University, and is the Director of the Integrated Pattern Recognition and Biometrics (iPRoBe) Lab. He conducts research on the topic of biometrics, privacy, computer vision and deep learning. He is a recipient of the JK Aggarwal Prize and the Young Biometrics Investigator Award from the International Association of Pattern Recognition for his contributions to the field of Pattern Recognition and Biometrics. He was designated a Kavli Fellow by the US National Academy of Sciences by virtue of his presentation at the 2006 Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposia. Ross is also a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the 2005 Biennial Pattern Recognition Journal Best Paper Award and the Five Year Highly Cited BTAS 2009 Paper Award.
Ross has advocated for the responsible use of biometrics in multiple forums including the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Identity and Security in Switzerland in 2018. He testified as an expert panelist in an event organized by the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee at the UN Headquarters in 2013. In June 2022, he testified at the US House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on the topic of Biometrics and Personal Privacy. He is a co-author of the monograph “Handbook of Multibiometrics” and the textbook “Introduction to Biometrics”.
