I have several thesis and research project topics for students who are interested in performing state of the art research. Following is the list of my current projects:

Recent advancements in the ubiquitous computing technology dramatically increased the ease of access to data and computing. There is a rapid growth in the users of smartphones usually equipped with useful gadgets such as wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. Mobile computing in the healthcare environment has recently become an exciting research topic, since most of today’s health monitoring devices are capable of wirelessly connecting to other devices such as smartphones. Mobile applications can be developed that facilitate automatic information management between the clinicians and patients.

Most of today’s computer and video games create environments that require very little physical effort, and thus promote sedentary activities among people. Recently there are attempts to change this trend through the invention of games such as ‘Wii Sports’ that require physical activity for game play. However, it is difficult to reproduce the intensity of real-life physical activities in a small indoor space. This problem can be addressed by developing pervasive physical activity-based games using mobile devices (for example, iPhone) that are equipped with motion sensors such as an accelerometer and gyroscope, and location sensors such as GPS.

My dissertation work manifested for the first time the feasibility of the use of physiological information on the face as a biometric feature. Specifically, we developed a new method that extracts the superficial vascular network on the face through thermal imaging, and uses it as a feature space for face recognition. However, there is a great scope for further research in this area to take the physiological face recognition technology to the next level. Specifically, I am investigating the individual contributions of vasculature on each portion of the face (for example forehead, cheeks, and neck) for facial biometrics.

Other biometric technologies that are based on superficial vasculature are hand vein, and finger vein biometrics. A multimodal physiological biometric technology can be developed based on fusion of the hand, finger, and facial physiological features for recognition. Besides high recognition accuracy, the major advantage of such a biometric technology is that it will be highly difficult to circumvent since the physiological information lies beneath the skin surface and is very hard to fake unless until the person goes through severe reconstructive surgery.

Thermal imaging has several potential applications in the medical field such as diagnosis of breast cancer, nervous system disorders, metabolic disorders, neck and back problems, pain syndromes, arthritis, vascular disorders, and soft tissue injuries among others.