KARACHI: King Saud University has won a patent from the United States by developing a biometrics-based iris recognition system after carrying out a project led by an accomplished Pakistani expert who is also the founded of an independent and non-partisan cybersecurity think-tank in Washington.
According to a post shared on the university’s website, the new system uses artificial intelligence and employs deep learning-based methods for extracting discriminant features from biometric traits obtained from eyeball images.
Muhammad Khurram Khan, who carried out and supervised the research, is a distinguished professor of cybersecurity from the Center of Excellence in Information Assurance and the founding CEO of the US think tank, Global Foundation for Cyber Studies and Research.
“The invention provides an innovative method based on multi-algorithm, multi-biometric, and multi-instance approaches to a single biometric source that enhances security and performance of the identification process at significant level,” the Saudi university announced.
“The invented technology has widespread applications, which are not only limited to areas such as immigration and border control, health care, banking and finance, consumer electronics, smart mobility, and military and defense, etc.,” it added.
The university website also proclaimed that Khan and his research team held a number of US patents in cybersecurity and had also published numerous high-impact research papers in flagship journals.
It also highlighted its own commitment to such research and development projects to transform the kingdom into a knowledge-based economy under Vision 2030.