Konstantinos N. (Kostas) Plataniotis received his B. Eng. degree in Computer Engineering & Informatics 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), Melbourne, Florida, in 1992 and 1994 respectively. He was an Assistant Professor with the Computer Science Department at Ryerson University, Ontario, Canada from July 1997 to June 1999. Dr. Plataniotis is currently an Associate Professor with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he directs the Multimedia Signal Processing Laboratory, and an Adjunct Professor with the School of Computer Science at Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a founding member and the inaugural Associate Director – Research of the newly established Identity, Privacy and Security Initiative (IPSI) at the University of Toronto. He serves on the Executive Committee of Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Plataniotis was the Guest Editor for the March 2005 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine special issue on Surveillance Networks and Services, and the Guest Editor for the EURASIP Applied Signal Processing Journal’s special issue on “Advanced Signal Processing & Pattern Recognition Methods for Biometrics”. Kostas is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and the IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He is a member of the 2008 IEEE Educational Activities Board and the Chair of the IEEE EAB Continuing Professional Education Committee. Dr. Plataniotis is a member of the IEEE Biometrics Council, a member of the IEEE Biometrics Education Working Group, and a member of the Steering Committee for the IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing. Dr. Plataniotis was the Chair of the IEEE Toronto Signal Processing and Applications Toronto Chapter from 2000 to 2002, the 2004-05 Chair of the IEEE Toronto Section, and he has served on the 2007 as well 2006 IEEE Admissions & Advancement Committee. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a registered professional engineer in the province of Ontario, and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.

The recipient of numerous grants and research contracts as the principal investigator, he speaks internationally and writes extensively in his field and he has been a consultant to a number of companies. He has served as lecturer in 12 short courses to industry and continuing education programs; he is a contributor to ten books, the co-author of Color Image Processing and Applications, Springer Verlag, 2000, (ISBN-3-540-66953-1), the co-editor of Color Imaging: Methods and Applications, CRC Press, September 2006, (ISBN 084939774X) and he has published 250 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. In 2005 he became the recipient of the IEEE Canada Engineering Educator Award for “contributions to engineering education and inspirational guidance of graduate students”. Dr. Plataniotis is the joint recipient of the “2006 IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award” for the published in 2003 “Face recognition using kernel direct discriminant analysis algorithms”, IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks, Vol. 14, No 1, 2003. He is the Managing Guest Editor of the IEEE/Wiley Press volume on “Biometrics: Theory, Methods and Applications” to be published in 2008.