Biometrics is the science of recognizing and authenticating people using their physiological features. Border and immigration control, restricted access to facilities and information systems, cybersecurity, crime investigations and forensic analysis are just a few of the primary application areas of biometrics used by commercial, government and law enforcement agencies. The global biometrics market has a compound annual growth rate of 21.3 percent. There is much research interest in different biometric systems and this has led to increasing efforts in ensuring that biometrics is taught at the undergraduate level. The authors are in the final year of an NSF TUES Type 2 grant that is based on the theme of vertically integrating biometrics experiments throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Three universities have joined together in this effort.
This paper is about the planning and assessment of a 3 day workshop that is based on the NSF funded effort. Fifteen faculty from across the country participated in this workshop. Undergraduate and graduate students also attended. The key points of the workshop included invited lectures and hands-on laboratory activities. The invited lectures included a tutorial on biometrics, detailed lectures on speaker recognition and a lecture on how to assess an educational intervention. The hands-on activities were presented such that the attending faculty could take them back to their respective universities. They were based on the following learning outcomes:
• Enhanced application of math skills
• Enhanced software implementation skills
• Enhanced interest in biometrics
• Enhanced ability to analyze experimental results
• Enhanced communication skills
• Comprehension of the importance of vertical integration, in that students
realize that their experiences are part of a flow that contributes to a unified
knowledge base.
The workshop assessment results are very positive with respect to organization, quality of the invited lectures, quality of the hands-on activities and the social program.
Ravi P. Ramachandran received the B. Eng degree (with great distinction) from Concordia University in 1984, the M. Eng degree from McGill University in 1986 and the Ph.D. degree from McGill University in 1990. From October 1990 to December 1992, he worked at the Speech Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories. From January 1993 to August 1997, he was a Research Assistant Professor at Rutgers University. He was also a Senior Speech Scientist at T-Netix from July 1996 to August 1997. Since September 1997, he is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rowan University where he has been a Professor since September 2006. He has served as a consultant to T-Netix, Avenir Inc., Motorola and Focalcool. From September 2002 to September 2005, he was an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing and was on the Speech Technical Committee for the IEEE Signal Processing society. Since September 2000, he has been on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine. Since May 2002, he has been on the Digital Signal Processing Technical Committee for the IEEE Circuits and Systems society. His research interests are in digital signal processing, speech processing, biometrics, pattern recognition and filter design.
Steven H. Chin is currently the Vice Dean of Engineering at Rowan University. He was Associate Dean from 1997-2009, served as Interim Dean from 2010-2012, and is now Vice Dean of Engineering. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Ph.
Kevin Dahm is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Rowan University. He earned his BS from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (92) and his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (98). He has published two books, "Fundamentals of Chemical Engineer
Dr. Liang Hong received the B.S. and the M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China in 1994 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri in 2002. Since August 2003, he has been with the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Tennessee State University where he is now Full Professor. His research interests include cognitive radio, security of communication systems, networked control system, wireless sensor networks, wireless multimedia communications and networks, and engineering education.
Sachin Shetty is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tennessee State University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Modeling and Simulation from Old Dominion University in 2007 under the supervision of Prof. Min Song. His research interests lie at the intersection of computer networking, network security and machine learning. Recently, he has been working on security issues in cloud computing, cognitive radio networks, and wireless sensor networks. Over the years, he has secured funding over $3 million from NSF, AFOSR, DOE, DHS, TBR and local industry for research and educational innovations. He has authored and coauthored over 30 technical refereed and non-refereed papers in various conferences, international journal articles, book chapters in research and pedagogical techniques. He is the director of the Cyber Defense and Security Visualization Laboratory
Robert M. Nickel received a Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, in 1994, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2001. During the 2001/2002 academic y
Richard J. Kozick received the B.S. degree from Bucknell University in 1986, the M.S. degree from Stanford University in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, all in electrical engineering. From 1986 to 1989 and from 1992 to 1993 he was a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Since 1993, he has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Bucknell University, where he is currently Professor. His research interests are in the areas of statistical signal processing and communications.
Dr. Kozick received a "2006 Best Paper Award" from the IEEE Signal Processing Society and the Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence from Bucknell University in 1999. He serves on the editorial board of the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking.
Ying Tang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Northeastern University, P. R. China, in 1996 and 1998, respectively, and Ph.D degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, in 2001. She is currently a Professor of Electrical and Comput
Robi Polikar is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rowan University, in Glassboro, NJ. He has received his B.Sc. degree in electronics and communications engineering from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1993, and his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees, both co-majors in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering, from Iowa State University, Ames, IA in 1995 and 2000, respectively. His current research interests within computational intelligence include ensemble systems, incremental and nonstationary learning, and various applications of pattern recognition in bioinformatics and biomedical engineering. He is a member of IEEE, ASEE, Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu. His recent and current works are funded primarily through NSF’s CAREER and Energy, Power and Adaptive Systems (EPAS) programs.
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