Each year, Concordia selects ten PhD students to represent the university’s interdisciplinary diversity and excellence in research. These scholars engage with the wider community to share the significance of their work and its impact on society. For his part, Azfar’s research is looking at ways in which biometrics can be used for age authentication online.
Traditionally, government-issued identification documents have been used to check an individual’s age. However, sharing such documents online may compromise privacy and risk document forgery. This shows the importance of anonymous age verification schemes, which can estimate a user’s age exclusively from their biometric data.
Whether it’s by way of facial imaging, heartbeat patterns, voice analysis or other signatures, researchers have been working to detect a user’s age through anonymous biometric data inputs. And while some of this technology has already been tested commercially, it remains in its early stages.
On October 12, join Azfar as he discusses the potential and challenges of this emerging technology.