Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium

4:15PM, Wednesday, April 5
NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03

Identity in a Networked World

Pierluigi Zappacosta and Vance Bjorn
Digital Persona Inc.
An increasing number of meaningful social interactions are taking place through the intermediation of computers. The World Wide Web has given this trend a global reach that makes it possible for individuals in distant corners of the world to engage in spontaneous interactions. One of the remaining obstacles to an even larger adoption of web-enabled transactions is the lack of convenient digital identities and of convenient ways to authenticate.

In this talk we discuss the issue of identity, as it transitions from the real world to the digital world, and demonstrate two biometrics-based authentication systems, recently announced by Digital Persona, one designed for “inside-the-firewall” transactions and the other for transactions over the web. We finally discuss some of the underlying technical components of these systems and some of the challenges encountered during their development.

About the speaker:

Pierluigi Zappacosta is Chairman of Digital Persona. Previously he was a founder of Logitech, where he worked over a 16-year period in various roles, including President and CEO. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Laurea in Electrical Engineering from the Universita’ di Roma, Italy.

Vance Bjorn is Chief Technology Officer of Digital Persona. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Electrical Engineering department at Caltech where he specialized in computation and neural systems (CNS). In starting DigitalPersona he went on leave from his studies as a National Department of Defense graduate fellow at the MIT AI Lab.

Contact information:

Pierluigi Zappacosta
Digital Persona Inc.
805 Veterans Blvd #301
Redwood City, CA 94063
650-306-8212
650-261-6079
PierluigiZ@digitalpersona.com