IABS3 Program Development Workshop

July 10, 2008 - Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Program Development Workshop

Introduction

The Program Development Workshop had three major objectives:

  1. Communicate the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other prospective sponsors’ priorities and needs in biometrics and human factors research
  2. Introduce the framework that the Institute intends to use to bridge Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ (ORAU’s)  member universities’ research capabilities with sponsor requirements
  3. Request input for the development of a collaboration plan for future IABS3 Program implementation and project development.

Workshop Agenda  (Attachment 2)

Principal Participants

IABS Program Development Workshop Attendees

A complete list of workshop attendees is provided in Attachment 1.  The principal participants included:

Sponsor Panel Members:

Dr. Myra Gray, Director, Biometrics Task Force, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) - Dr. Gray is currently overseeing the development of the DoD biometric policies and enterprise solutions for physical and logical access uses crossing all functional areas.  Prior to assignment in this position, Dr. Gray served as the Director, ASA(ALT) Future Force Integration Office, leading the Department of the Army (DA) coordination for the Future Combat Systems (the Army’s largest acquisition program and primary modernization effort), developing and defending Army program actions, positions, and decisions to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Office of Management and Budget, and Congress and facilitating collaboration, cooperation, and consensus among the stakeholders and principals within DA and OSD.

Christopher Turner, Deputy Division Head for Transition, Human Factors Division, Science and Technology Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), representing DHS Human Factors Division Director Dr. Sharla Rausch -   During its inaugural year in 2003, Turner joined DHS S&T and served in several roles necessary to get the nascent agency up and running.  He served as Deputy for BioWatch ensuring optimal support to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions and as S&T's first Technology Transition Manager for the Systems Engineering and Development Office overseeing the deployment of some of S&T's earliest first technology solutions.  Before joining DHS, he held several other positions in the federal technology R&D field.

Tom Bush, Assistant Director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Justice – Appointed to his current position in 2004 by FBI Director Mueller, Bush has been a career employee with the bureau, starting his career in 1975.  Prior to his current position, he was Special Agent in Charge of the St. Louis Field Division. During his 30 years with the bureau, he has managed other field offices and divisions and has held special supervisory roles at headquarters, which have provided him with a broad background in multiple types of investigative and crime units.

Alex Hanish, Modeling and Simulation Division, Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) – A 2003 graduate of Virginia Tech, Hanish received undergraduate degrees in both computer engineering and mathematics.  After completing his bachelor’s degree, Hanish continued his education at George Washington University, where he completed his master’s degree in computer science.  For the last five years, he has put his educational background to use in modeling, simulation, and visualization work for the Navy and other groups within the DoD.

Key Participants:

Introductory Comments:  

Blair Ross, Director for the Institute for Advanced Biometrics and Social Systems Studies (IABS3), provided an overview of the Institute’s formation in response to the rapidly expanding need in the human factors arena (Attachment 3), which includes behavior sciences, behavioral modeling and simulation, the human dimension of warfare, and other areas.  Human factors have become an increasingly important mission concern for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and other federal agencies, as well as for state and regional bodies and the private sector.  Ross emphasized that the new Institute has a unique opportunity to bring together universities and other research organizations in collaborative efforts to meet complex research requirements that one institution alone would not have the capabilities to accomplish.

Dr. Harvey Gray, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for the National Security Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), discussed the history of the human factors work at ORNL and its evolution to the research that is currently underway.

Dr. Ron Townsend, president of Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), an organization consisting of more than 100 member universities, discussed the research capabilities of its member institutions, provided examples of collaborative efforts, and explained the opportunity to leverage the expertise of both ORNL and the universities to meet the unique needs in the biometrics and social systems fields.

Research Requirements Overview:

Dr. Myra Gray (Attachment 4) provided an overview of identity management and the work of the Biometrics Task Force (BTF), which she directs.  This Task Force leads DoD activities to program, integrate, and synchronize biometric technologies and capabilities and to operate and maintain an authoritative database to support the national security strategy.  Human factors can be a tremendous tool in the war on terror, and can have broader utility, such as determining if a soldier is eligible for benefits or identifying a wounded soldier on the battle field who comes into the field hospital with no identification.  Although biometrics are being used now, Dr. Gray pointed out some emerging missions and their biometric-supporting capability requirements, emphasizing that many potential uses have probably not even yet been identified.  For future needs, the emphasis will be on getting high-volume biometric data throughput, rapid turnaround and authentication for checking quickly against biometric scans or other forms of biometric data inputs.  Some of the functional area requirements she mentioned include intelligence, access, forensics, and system architecture.

Chris Turner (Attachment 5) discussed the DHS Human Factors Divison group processes, explaining the organization’s four areas of investment:  product transition, innovative capabilities, basic research, and broad areas, which include laboratory operations, test and evaluation and standards.  Turner indicated that his organization recently drafted its first strategic plan, which is centered on 1) applying the social, behavioral and physical sciences to improve identification, analysis, and understanding of the threats posed by individuals, groups, and radical movements; 2) supporting community preparedness, response, and recovery to catastrophic events; and 3) advancing national security by integrating the human element into homeland security science and technology.  As a result of this planning effort, the DHS HF Division has established relevant goals and defined current capabilities and areas in need of further research.

Tom Bush indicated that other countries are developing the same technologies and capabilities that the United States government agencies are.  The Department of Justice has noted a need for increased collaboration between the various research entities in this field.  Multi-modal capabilities are necessary because established methods like fingerprints and facial recognition alone are not fully reliable, and newer approaches such as earlobe configuration, voice recognition, etc. are very immature.  The FBI is looking for expanded capabilities in the disciplines of identity management, identity dominance, and identity intelligence.  They would like to be able to leverage what the DoD is doing in this area, and add additional institutions to the established framework in West Virginia that they are working with DOJ and other agency requirements are driving the industry to field new technologies.  Bush feels that laboratories and universities can provide the basic research foundations upon which these technologies are based.  The FBI also needs expertise applicable to training in these multiple biometric modalities.

Alex Hanish, representing the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), focused on behavioral modeling and simulation.  He indicated that his organization is working to further develop their capabilities in this arena.  In the past they have focused more on laws of physics and engineering in simulations methodologies.  However, social science is a more difficult modeling challenge.  JWAC relies on relationships with universities to help increase available expertise. Most of the tools that JWAC uses and the models that they run tend to not incorporate uncertainties associated with human factors, and analysts challenge their assumptions and what they know with increased knowledge and expertise.  They require better tools to incorporate the influence of social sciences in their analytical framework.

Representative Research Capabilities Overview

As part of the workshop, three Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers from different divisions within the laboratory provided summaries of their work as representative of the capabilities that IABS3 can leverage.

Dr. Shaun Gleason, (Attachment 6) leader of the Image Science and Machine Vision Group, discussed the work of his organization, which covers a wide spectrum from the biomedical area to industrial inspection to national security.  During his presentation, he detailed three areas:  venous imaging, facial recognition, and iris scanning.  Although the venous imaging was initially motivated by the medical industry, it now has implications for all types of identification needs, including the defense and security arenas.  In the facial recognition area, the group has been working on video surveillance technology, including secure-facility monitoring.  According to Gleason, this research has progressed beyond using facial recognition for point identification, to include tracking.  In the area of iris recognition research, ORNL has examined refraction and dilation issues.  A more integrated approach to multi-modality, incorporating effective use of laboratory systems and modeling capabilities, is an increasingly important area of investigation. .

As one of over two dozen social and behavioral science professionals in the Environmental Sciences Division, Dr. Amy Wolfe (Attachment 7) indicated that this group had its origins back in the late 1960s when the national environmental policy act was passed.  ORNL has played a critical role in developing the social impact assessment field in order to examine the social implications of nuclear power facilities.  This core capability, which includes a variety of disciplines, is applied to science and technology policy analysis for a variety of different federal sponsors.  Wolfe’s group looks across the technology research, development, deployment, and decommissioning cycle because different phases of the cycle raise different questions and many non-traditional issues, varying from strategic planning and analysis to societal and market acceptability.  The group has done some interesting work in the field of susceptibility of technologies, looking at potential technologies that have not yet been developed and building a framework to model how the various technologies are viewed by both the developer and the community of users.

Dr. Steve Fernandez (Attachment 8) of the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division discussed several population modeling and simulation projects that have been combined into a threat anticipation methodology.  Subject matter experts and a scenario-development group can create simulation elements to build scenarios with different geographical and temporal components.  Fernandez indicated that capabilities in populating an information store come from many different databases relevant to a synthetic population.  Assigning the locations of individuals, determining what their attributes are, how they would interact, etc., can be exceptionally complex.  Current work also incorporates data from the military and peacekeeper forces, economic data on a national level, information systems, and infrastructure details.

IABS3’s Approach to Meeting Research Requirements

Blair Ross presented an overview of the principal elements of the Institute’s approach to delivering research results in response to sponsor requirements (Attachment 9).

Terina Stewart, Project Manager for the Institute’s PARET Project (Providing Access to Resilience-Enhancing Technologies for Disadvantaged Communities and Vulnerable Populations), provided a presentation on this work (Attachment 10).  This multi-disciplined project team is currently examining the impact of disasters in relation to socioeconomically disadvantaged populations and the potential role of technology in helping these communities prepare for and recover from natural and man-made catastrophic events.

Key Observations and Insights from Workshop Discussions

  • The field continues to evolve and expand, allowing multiple research communities to be involved in examining the broad range of topical areas related to biometrics and social systems sciences.  Professional scientific research capabilities are a critical asset that the universities can offer.  All recognize that it takes time to develop working relationships involved with effective contributions in this arena.
  • All researchers involved should understand that national security sponsors are often pressed to solicit technologies for rapid deployment, rather than resourcing more basic initial research.  All must make a compelling case for the benefits of basic research investment at every opportunity.  
  • There is a vacuum in terms of funding between the basic research and the production/fielding stage.  An imbedded issue is how investment on the front end by the researcher and organization will be recouped by subsequent funding from prospective sponsors.
  • Having a central organizational point of contact that has access to an array of research capabilities that can be focused on agency needs has a tremendous benefit over each agency trying to research and establish its own technical relationships.  The Institute can play a positive role, particularly in opening and sustaining lines of communication between sponsors funding projects and research organizations.  That said, the Institute must work to avoid negative influences such as slowing down deliverables. 
  • Facilitated access to affordable, large-scale computing resources for running calculations, modeling, and other research activities is a critical complement to the universities contributing in this field.
  • The Institute must function as an honest broker between various funding agencies and the universities.  The perception of bias could cause the Institute to miss out on some opportunities and potential collaborations.  ORAU and the new Institute need to be seen as partnership builders.  A spirit of collaboration, as opposed to competition, must be developed and enhanced, whereby research gaps are plugged and stronger teams are created with a better chance of attracting research sponsors.
  • Much potentially inter-related research is going on in different departments or schools within each university.  A hierarchical, integrated fusion approach to bring all of this information together to respond to various proposals would be exceptionally beneficial.
  • Since September 11, many of the funding opportunities are in classified or sensitive research areas, and many universities do not want to start or increase their classified research portfolios.  Export control is an additional issue that some researchers face.

You can also download a PDF version of the IABS3 Program Development Workshop Summary

If you attended the Program Development Workshop and have additional feedback or if you were unable to attend the workshop and would like to provide input related to the development of IABS3, please submit your comments to: info@iabs3.org