FedID Award Winners
Submit your FedID 2023 Awards Nominations. Note: achievements in categories #1-4 must have been completed within the preceding 18 months.
Career Achievement
Patrick Grother/NIST - Patrick is a senior scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and an internationally recognized leader in the field of biometrics. He is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on biometric testing and standards, leading groundbreaking research and standardization work that has greatly impacted the use of biometrics in the federal government and private industry. His pioneering work as lead developer of biometric standards for the Federal Personal Identity Verification (PIV) program paved the way for the integration of biometrics with smart cards. This identity verification solution has been implemented at the core of applications in both government and private sector programs. He is widely acknowledged as a visionary leader by the biometrics research community, where his pioneering contributions in biometric technologies and quality continue to be recognized internationally.
Patrick oversees NIST research supporting numerous US Government agencies use of biometrics and has been DHS' and FBI’s primary face recognition SME since 2003. He is the project lead of face and iris research at NIST, and has built and led numerous test programs over the years, including the Minutiae Interoperability Exchange Test (MINEX) as a conformant instance of his ISO/IEC 19795-4 Interoperability Performance Testing standard, Iris Exchange (IREX), expanding iris recognition capabilities to support a marketplace of iris-based applications based on standardized interoperable iris imagery, and the Ongoing Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), which has become a globally-recognized “gold-standard” for testing face recognition capabilities.
Patrick’s 30 years of dedication and sustained contributions to the biometrics community has made him the subject matter expert in the biometrics community that agencies, industry, policy, privacy, and the media look to for technical advice and leadership.
Best Technical Advancement
Arun Vemury/RIVTD Team (DHS S&T) - Arun is leading DHS S&T’s groundbreaking Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration (RIVTD). The RIVDTD is an independent, third party testing of identity and access management companies’ fake document, likeness, and selfie-matching testing. DHS S&T and its partners evaluate the ability of systems to authenticate identity documents, assess the "liveness" of selfie photos, and evaluate identity verification using images taken with smartphones and similar devices.
- DHS OBIM Group Award (Kneapler, Grottle, Boyd) - OBIM developed a vendor agnostic multimodal biometric fusion (MMBF) prototype that analyzes biometric modality data, employs the best algorithm for each modality (as evaluated in trials by NIST), and generates a composite matching score. This modular fusion approach provides the ability to leverage both existing and emerging biometric matching algorithms, enabling improvements to the system as the “state-of-the-art” progresses.
- DoD B-SDK - The Defense Biometric Software Development Kit represents a significant technical innovation in the realm of identity verification and security through biometric data, addressing the need for a standardized method of formatting and exchanging biometric data across different systems. The Defense B-SDK represents a crucial step towards unifying and streamlining biometric data exchange for the USG, resulting in significant cost savings and improved efficiency across various agencies.
- Arun Vemury/RIVTD Team (DHS S&T) - Arun is leading DHS S&T’s groundbreaking Remote Identity Validation Technology Demonstration (RIVTD). The RIVDTD is an independent, third party testing of identity and access management companies’ fake document, likeness, and selfie-matching testing. DHS S&T and its partners evaluate the ability of systems to authenticate identity documents, assess the "liveness" of selfie photos, and evaluate identity verification using images taken with smartphones and similar devices.
Best Operational Success
IRS Secure Access Digital Identity (SADI) Team - The IRS SADI Team is responsible for executive oversight of technical development activities for external ID proofing, authentication, and authorization, and helped secure over 1B site visits in search of various IRS online services. As a result of their work, this program has enabled more than double the amount of people to securely access IRS online tools and applications.
- IRS Secure Access Digital Identity (SADI) Team - The IRS SADI Team is responsible for executive oversight of technical development activities for external ID proofing, authentication, and authorization, and helped secure over 1B site visits in search of various IRS online services. As a result of their work, this program has enabled more than double the amount of people to securely access IRS online tools and applications.
- SSA Digital Identity Team - The Social Security Administration (SSA) developed a Digital Identity strategy that recognizes the risk of fraudulent use of new electronic processes and improper disclosure while increasing access to legitimate users. The SSA Identity Team has been tasked with the tall order of protecting the digital front door of over a trillion dollars in annual benefits to over 75 million Americans. SSA’s Digital Identity Team has achieved noteworthy performance gains while adopting a modernized approach to digital identity. They have increased overall access rates to my Social Security with a multi-credential service provider (CSP) approach and improved the user experience.
Service and Leadership
Bethany Retton (DOJ FBI CJIS) - Bethany Retton has been involved in research and development at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division for over ten years. She has worked on various projects including the latent search best practices using FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, Universal Latent Workstation (ULW) software, Latent Quality Metric (LQMetric) software, and the FBI's iris pilot all of which are now operational. She is currently a member of National Institute of Standard and Technology’s (NIST) Iris Expert’s Group (IEG) supporting further advancement of iris recognition capabilities. Ms. Retton also is the Vice Chair of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science’s (OSAC) Facial and Iris Identification Subcommittee assisting in the development iris recognition standards. Additionally, Ms. Retton serves as Chair of the International Association for Identification’s (IAI) Biometric Information Services Subcommittee and is also a certified latent fingerprint examiner through that organization.
- Ryan Triplett (DOD DFBA) - Ryan Triplett is the Standards lead at DFBA, he serves as the primary DoD voting member to INCITS M1 biometric standards development organization, U.S. representative to ISO/IEC SC37 biometric standards body, and ISO TC 272 forensics standards body. He also serves as chair of the INCITS Expert Group on Human Language Technology, custodian of NATO Standardization Agreement 4715 Biometric Data Interchange as well as editor of the DoD Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification. Mr. Triplett also co-chairs the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) Biometrics Domain, and chairs both the DoD Forensic and Biometric Standards Working Group and the DoD and IC Joint Enterprise Standards Committee’s Forensic and Biometric Technical Working Group.
- Bethany Retton (DOJ FBI CJIS) - Bethany Retton has been involved in research and development at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division for over ten years. She has worked on various projects including the latent search best practices using FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, Universal Latent Workstation (ULW) software, Latent Quality Metric (LQMetric) software, and the FBI's iris pilot all of which are now operational. She is currently a member of National Institute of Standard and Technology’s (NIST) Iris Expert’s Group (IEG) supporting further advancement of iris recognition capabilities. Ms. Retton also is the Vice Chair of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science’s (OSAC) Facial and Iris Identification Subcommittee assisting in the development iris recognition standards. Additionally, Ms. Retton serves as Chair of the International Association for Identification’s (IAI) Biometric Information Services Subcommittee and is also a certified latent fingerprint examiner through that organization.