Biometric Identification Operation, Applications, Issues

Dr. Andy Adler
Assistant Professor
School of Information Technology and Engineering
University of Ottawa

October 19, 2005
admission is free
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Mackenzie Building
4359 Carleton University

Abstract

The new machine readable passport standard requires countries to  include face recognition data. Applicants for US Visas now must  present fingerprints. The UK government plans to issue biometric  enabled identity cards to all citizens. In the last three years,  biometric identification has become a technology that will  impact all of our lives.

This talk will give an overview of biometric technologies, especially fingerprint, face, and iris recognition. We'll  explore how they work, how well they work, when/how they  don't work, and how they're evaluated.

Biometrics technology generates significant concern for  its privacy and security implications.  I'll give my opinions  on these issues, as well as what problems they are likely  to be able to solve, and which capabilities will remain "hype".

Biography

Andy Adler received the B.A.Sc. (honours) in Engineering  Physics from the University of British Columbia in 1990. In 1990-1991, he worked in research at CIL explosives. He  then returned to school and completed a Ph.D. in  Biomedical Engineering at the École Polytechnique de  Montréal in 1995. In 1995-1998, he worked at postdoctoral positions at McGill University and the University of  Colorado Health Sciences Center. In 1998-1999, he was  hardware engineering team leader for American Biometric  Company. Subsequently, in 1999-2001, he worked for AiT corporation as a senior software engineer, architecting  and developing cryptographic and biometric security  technology systems for government applications. In  2001-2002, he was the senior biometrics scientist for BioDentity Systems corporation. In 2002, he joined the  School of Information Technology and Engineering at the  University of Ottawa.  His interests are: 1) development  of novel biomedical measurement devices and medical image  and signal processing algorithms, and, 2) biometrics  imaging and security systems, and the associated  algorithms, measurement devices, and privacy and security  aspects.

Last modified 05-10-24