A List
9/12/05

SLU PROF GETS NSF GRANT FOR BIOMETRICS RESEARCH

CANTON - The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded St. Lawrence University Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics Michael E. Schuckers a $51,670 grant to purchase new computing equipment that will assist in an ongoing collaborative research project in biometrics. To date, this group and their collaborators have received over $3.5 million in funding from the NSF.

Schuckers is the principal investigator on this most recent grant; on this he is collaborating with researchers at the West Virginia University. This grant supports research developing new biometric authentication technologies and involves five tasks: improvement of facial recognition; investigation of large-scale distributed systems; simulation of matching performance for system scaling; investigation of saccades (fast eye movements) as a potential biometric; and exploration of multi-spectral iris imaging.

Biometrics is the science of using measurements on biological properties, such as fingerprints, a retina scan, or voice-recognition equipment, to identify individuals.

Schuckers is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, with a master's degree from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. from Iowa State University. He taught at West Virginia University prior to joining the St. Lawrence faculty in 2002, and has published widely in the statistical evaluation of biometric identification. Much of the biometrics research he has conducted at St. Lawrence has been done in collaboration with undergraduate students.

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