Contact Info

Hamerschlag Hall B200 M7
Office: 412-268-4495
phh at cmu dot edu

I am a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) working under Prof. Vijaya Kumar in the area of biometrics.

My expected graduation date will be in early 2008.

I obtained the M.S. degree in Electronic Systems ('02) and the B.S. degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering ('98), both from the Tec de Monterrey (ITESM), Monterrey Campus, Mexico.

Most of my work at CMU has been in the area of biometric recognition, such as fingerprint, face, iris, and palmprint recognition (most of my publications are on palmprint and face). Biometrics is a pattern recognition (or pattern classification) problem that involves image processing, analysis and modeling, as well as design of robust classification algorithms using machine learning techniques.  In our work we focus on improving the reliability and performance of each biometric technology under different environments.

My current research is on super-resolution methods for recognition of low resolution faces. Super-resolution is about inferring the missing pixels lost when a high-resolution image is transformed to a low-resolution one. Super-resolution in our case involves learning features from large databases of high-resolution face images.

Recent work includes wavelet analysis of biometric imagery to find subspaces where classification performance is best for a specific classification algorithm. In our case we design wavelet packet trees that benefit advanced correlation filter classifiers. I also worked in palmprint recognition; we showed that a filter bank of advanced correlation filters is a very competitive classifier for this biometric.

I have also worked with fMRI pattern recognition, and protein identification in fluorescent microscopy images (proteomics).

Advisor: V.K. Vijaya Kumar Bhagavatula

Collaborators:

Simon Baker
Marios Savvides
Jelena Kovacevic
Jason R. Thornton