PITTSBURGH — Carnegie Mellon University and the National Biometric Security Project (NBSP) have announced a memorandum of agreement to collaborate on developing advanced biometric technologies like the use of fingerprints, iris recognition and hand geometry to help deter terrorist and criminal activity.
The new collaboration will focus on identifying and resolving new biometric challenges, as well as joint participation in industry symposia, developing and distributing reports about biometric-related topics, and conducting technology testing and evaluation at the NBSP's West Virginia-based laboratories.
The NBSP is a non-profit biometrics testing, training, and research and analysis organization created to improve the security of the U.S. national infrastructure and enhance identity assurance through biometrics. The organization is also a leading advocate of using biometrics to defend the critical U.S. civil infrastructure against terrorist attacks.
"Because of Carnegie Mellon's reputation for excellence in engineering technology, it is an ideal complement to the NBSP's efforts to accelerate the growth, acceptance and use of biometric technologies," said Michael Yura, NBSP senior vice president. "We look forward to working with them to conduct studies on biometric technology, usage, biometric curricula development, and the legal, social and policy issues that may arise from large-scale deployment of biometrics."
Pradeep Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and co-founder of Carnegie Mellon CyLab, said biometrics is one of the leading security technologies of this century. "Our university research in many new areas of information technology and cybersecurity during the past two decades makes this an excellent research match."
Since 2005, more than 100 researchers at Carnegie Mellon CyLab have been working to develop new technologies for trustworthy, sustainable computing and communication systems.
"We are also developing advanced, state-of-the art biometrics systems to augment face and iris recognition," said Marios Savvides, a research scientist in Carnegie Mellon's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and director of the Biometrics, Security, Research, Engineering and Training Lab (BIOSECRET) at Carnegie Mellon.
University researchers working on the development of advanced face and iris matching are also studying techniques about biometric encryption. By using biometric encryption, instead of storing a sample of one's fingerprint or iris in a database in raw form, you can use your fingerprint or iris to encrypt or code some other information like a PIN number, account number or another biometric.
Carnegie Mellon CyLab also works closely with the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), a leading, internationally recognized center of Internet security expertise. Through its connection with CERT/CC, Carnegie Mellon CyLab also works closely with US-CERT, a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Division and the private sector that aims to protect the national information infrastructure.
