MARCH 7--Professor John Daugman, the scientist who invented iris recognition, has signed a three-year consulting agreement with L-1 Identity Solutions (Stamford, CT, USA; www.l1id.com) as chief scientist for iris recognition. Daugman will report through the L-1 Corporate Research Center and split his time between his current faculty position at Cambridge University (Cambridge, UK; www.cam.ac.uk) and his new position as the L-1 chief scientist for iris recognition.
Separately, the company announced that Daugman settled his long-standing dispute with Iridian Technologies, which was acquired by L-1 in late 2006 and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of L-1. As part of that agreement, Daugman delivered to L-1 and assigned all rights and ownership to L-1 of certain enhanced iris-recognition algorithms that he has developed over recent years. L-1 will market its core iris-recognition algorithms as enhanced by the "Daugman Algorithm." Financial terms of the settlement agreement were not disclosed.
The Daugman Algorithm is the basis of many publicly deployed iris-recognition systems. More than 50 million persons worldwide have had their iris patterns mathematically enrolled by the Daugman Algorithm. Daugman's enhancements to his core older algorithms improve their performance with poorer images, off-axis gaze, and more unusual eyes.
Daugman received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA), then was appointed to the Harvard faculty, and in 1991 joined Cambridge University as a faculty member. He has served as an associate editor of key journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.
