Prof. Konstantinos N. (Kostas) Plataniotis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto

Wednesday, November 29, 2006, 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
  6:00 Arrival & Networking
  6:30 Talk
  7:30 Conclusion

Biometric identification, authentication, verification of claimed identity, and prevention of unauthorized access to physical assets and confidential, sensitive information are critical elements of an effective security architecture in several civilian and commercial applications. Biometrics, a measurable physical characteristic or personal behavior trait that can be used to identify and verify a claimed identity appears to be the obvious choice for large scale authentication, user identification and platform/application attestation. However, despite the progress made during the last few years biometric systems still have to reckon with a number of problems which illustrate the need for the: (i) introduction of new biometric processing solutions, (ii) proliferation of application standards, and (iii) the development of user confidence in biometrics system performance.

This introductory presentation aims to focus on emerging biometric technologies and comprehensively cover the scientific side of their system, processing and application aspects. The presentation will discuss biometrics related activities at ECE-UofT and briefly touch upon biometrics-based outreach activities and the links to personal privacy and security.

Konstantinos N. (Kostas) Plataniotis, received his B. Eng.degree in Computer Engineering from University of Patras, Greece in 1988 and his M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech) in Melbourne, Florida, USA in 1992 and1994 respectively. He is an Associate Professor with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, an Adjunct Professor with the School of Computer Science at Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and a member of The University of Toronto's Knowledge Media Design Institute. His research interests include biometrics, communications systems, multimedia systems, and signal & image processing.

Dr. Plataniotis is aregistered professional engineer in the province of Ontario, and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEETrans. on Neural Networks and the IEEE Signal Processing Letters as well as the image processing Area Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Society'se-letter. Dr. Plataniotis is a member of the IEEE TAB Committee on Biometrics. He was the Technical Program Co-Chair for IEEE ICME-2006 and the Vice-Chair of IEEE ITSC-2006. He is the 2005 recipient of IEEE Canada's Outstanding Engineering Educator Award "for contributions to engineering educationand inspirational guidance of graduate students" and the co-recipient of the 2006 IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award.

Web Page: http://www.dsp.toronto.edu/~kostas/