Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Wednesday, June 18, 2025,
This lecture is on Wednesday, not our usual day.
Lecture starts at 3:00 PM On line and in Building 3 Auditorium

Shahram Orandi

" Biometrics 101: A brief history of fingerprints, how they're collected & used for identification, and what could they possibly have in common with the NASA Mars rovers "

ABSTRACT -- Together we'll explore the history of fingerprints and their use for identification of individuals, and we'll even go through a live demo of fingerprint capture, salient feature detection and machine matching using the presenters fingers. Along the way we will also explore several key challenges in biometrics that are also faced by our colleagues at NASA… and even look at an example of how/why a technology from the Mars rovers ended up in one of our NIST evaluations.

SPEAKER -- Shahram Orandi is currently a biometric research scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Prior to this role, he served as the Chief of the Information Access Division as well as the Group Leader for the Image Group in the Information Access Division. He is currently working in the area of biometric identification systems research and standards with a concentration in contactless fingerprint capture.

His research interests include sensor science, biometric data capture & processing, data compression, and image classification. Throughout his professional career, Shahram has supported the design, development and testing of various large scale biometric identification and credentialing systems supporting civilian and law enforcement applications. Prior to entering civil service, Shahram had worked in the commercial sector on medical claims systems, accident injury modelling and electronic health management systems, and commercial power plant accident modelling and management systems.

Shahram holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College Park, a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University.

Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Brent Warner, NASA-GSFC (ret)

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov