Hareesh Mandalapu has defended his PhD entitled "Robust Algorithms for Audio-Visual Biometric Authentication" on Wednesday 15 December. His work is carried out at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology. Here is a brief summary of this thesis:

Biometric authentication has been a vital method of human identification across a wide range of applications. However, the vulnerabilities and dependencies of biometric algorithms question the robustness and accuracy of biometric recognition. This Ph.D. work focuses on the topic of the generalization of biometric algorithms and problems caused by presentation attacks. The vulnerabilities in audio-visual biometrics are observed with the help of a thorough review of existing recognition and presentation attack detection (PAD) methods. A novel smartphone biometric dataset is created and benchmarking experiments are performed under different scenarios. Further, presentation attack detection methods in iris biometrics are evaluated and a state-of-the-art PAD method is proposed. The impact of language mismatch and voice impersonation on speaker recognition is investigated. A voice impersonation dataset and a smartphone-based audio replay attack dataset are developed during this Ph.D. work. The contributions of this thesis would assist in understanding and developing robust biometric algorithms considering various factors.

Read the electronic version of thesis here: https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/handle/11250/2834504

Assessment committee:

• 1st. opponent: Professor Massimo Tistarelli, Department of Biomedical Sciences and Information Technology, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy
• 2nd. opponent: Assistant Professor Ajita Rattani, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Wichita State University, Wichita, USA
• Member and Administrator: Associate Professor Basel Katt, Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU, Gjøvik, Norway

(Top-left: Asso. Prof. Basel Katt, Top-right: Assi. Prof. Ajita Rattani, Bottom-left: Prof. Massimo Tistarelli, Bottom-right: Hareesh Mandalapu.)

Hareesh Mandalapu’s main supervisor has been Professor Raghavendra Ramachandra, IIK, NTNU, co-supervisor Professor Christoph Busch, IIK, NTNU.

Congratulations!!!