The program, Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science with Lincoln University College (LUC) is offered by the Faculty of Computer Science & Multimedia. The program provides Biometric Security as specialization that is designed to take students to the cutting edge of expertise in the Biometric Security specialization domain of Computer Science. The Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science with Biometric Security specialization integrates theory and practice in a versatile and comprehensive manner. Students can look forward to academic/research careers in Computer Sciences (at universities, government, or industrial research laboratories), teaching (at colleges or universities), or be a part of software companies.
A PhD in Computer Science with Biometric Security specialization looks deeply in advance computer security. The current focus is on the analysis and mitigation of privacy risks in a rapidly digitalising society. The process of protecting privacy by facilitating the recognition of individuals and also the inference from biometric data of emotional state, gender, health, age, and even profession. Advancements are made in artificial intelligence allowing for extensive data mining, and aggregation, linkage and inference of personal information. Hence, there is a real possibility that acceptable privacy can be achieved. The objective will be to train the next generation of researchers to define, investigate and implement solutions that ensure secure and efficient privacy protection whilst keeping the advantages of a digitalised society, and provide them with transferable skills to enable effective planning, management and communication of research ideas and outcomes. This will give them excellent career opportunities.
The specific research topic is to develop theory and methodologies to quantify security in the context of data (traditional biometrics or physiological identifiers such as Facial recognition, Fingerprints, Voice recognition, Iris recognition, Retina scanning, Finger geometry, DNA matching and Digital signatures as well as touch and movement patterns or Behavioural identifiers including Walking gait, Typing patterns, Physical gestures (such as hand motion), computer mouse use and others, soft biometrics, and context information) acquired through the interaction of the user with sensor devices. New methods and metrics to better quantify privacy will be proposed and applied to the biometric data under consideration in continuous authentication schemes. The main scientific goals will be to analyse the main challenges and requirements of biometric template protection, both for security and privacy, in single and multi-modal biometric systems. To evaluate several state-of-the-art approaches, the information stored for future requirement, the recognition performance, the potential advantages and limitations.
For successful completion of the PhD degree in LUC, each candidate should publish a minimum of four research articles in Scopus indexed journals/ Conferences with Lincoln University College affiliation.