Biometrics pioneer Anil Jain honored with endowment

A $1 million endowed professorship at Michigan State University has been named in honor of Anil and Nandita Jain.

Anil Jain is a renowned biometrics innovator whose research has focused on biometric recognition, computer vision and pattern recognition. MSU says that his wife, Nandita, and their three daughters have made substantial related contributions.

The gift will be used to attract and retain university researchers and teachers in computer vision, machine learning and pattern recognition.

It actually is a million-dollar bundle of donor gifts made over previous years.

A university distinguished professor of computer science and engineering, Jain has innovated in research on face and fingerprint recognition as well as data clustering.

Along with 14 advisors, he is conducting a U.S. study for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on potential uses and misuses of facial recognition.

A disclosure on the National Academies website notes that he is a shareholder in Rank One Computing and Microsoft, as well as a palm biometrics consultant for and stockholder in Amazon.

Leo Kempel, dean of the university’s College of Engineering, issued a statement saying that the “fund is especially gratifying as it recognizes the generational impact made by Anil and Nandita to the department, college, university and field of computer science.”

Jain has discussed issues related to closing the global digital identity gap and infant biometrics in-depth with Biometric Update.

Article Topics

Anil Jain  |  biometrics  |  biometrics research  |  computer vision  |  education  |  machine learning  |  MSU  |  research and development