Kiran Bylappa Raja successfully completed his PhD trial lecture and thesis defense at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology on Friday, the 11th of November 2016 and will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
The title of his thesis is “Robust Biometric Verification based on the Eye Region – Algorithms for Visible Spectrum Image Data” and the given topic for his trial lecture was “Evading Ubiquitous Face Recognition”.
Popular mobile banking and e-commerce applications like Google Wallet, Apple Pay and Ali Pay have resulted in the use of smartphones for secure access of services via biometric data captured from an embedded sensor.
Now the improved optics on smartphones have been explored for biometric data capture in a contactless manner as well. This can be used for various secure authentication applications. Specifically, the applications are exploring face, periocular and iris characteristics for smartphone-based authentication using the embedded camera.
Raja presented a set of robust algorithms and techniques to use iris, periocular and face data for authentication applications when captured from smartphones in the visible spectrum. He has improved the biometric systems by detecting spoofing attacks and thereby making the authentication applications trustworthy on smartphones.
The following committee has been appointed to evaluate his thesis, trial lecture and defense:
- First external opponent: Professor Dr. Arun Ross, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, USA.
- Second external opponent: Professor Dr. Raul Sanchez-Reillo, Electronics Technology Department, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain.
- Internal opponent: Associate Professor Dr. Laura Georg, Norwegian Information Security Laboratory (NISlab), Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU in Gjøvik.
- Administrator for the assessment committee: Professor Stephen Wolthusen, Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU in Gjøvik.
- Dean Nils Kalstad Svendsen, Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU in Gjøvik, led disputation.
Kiran Bylappa Raja carried out his PhD work at the Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU. His supervisor was Professor Christoph Busch, Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU in Gjøvik and Co-supervisor was Dr. Raghavendra Ramachandra, Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, NTNU in Gjøvik.
Congratulations!
