Sunpreet Singh Arora

Staff Research Scientist

Research Areas: Biometrics, Security, and Machine Learning

Sunpreet Arora, Visa Research scientist.

Biography

Dr. Sunpreet Singh Arora joined Visa Research as a Staff Research Scientist in April 2019, where he is leading the identity and authentication research program. Prior to his current role, Sunpreet was working in the Identity and Risk Products organization at Visa, where he co-founded the Applied Authentication lab to design and develop solutions for in-store, online and in-car user authentication using cutting edge emerging technologies, such as biometrics, deep learning and cryptography. He also developed the biometrics performance specifications for the Visa Ready program, and contributed to the biometrics certification program in the Fast Identity Online Alliance (FIDO).

Sunpreet received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Michigan State University in 2016, and received his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering, graduating with honors, from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi in 2012. He is a co-inventor on over 15 patent applications and has published over 15 articles in several international conferences and journals, including Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TPAMI) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS) IEEE, International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), International Conference on Biometrics (ICB), International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS) IEEE, International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD), and others.

Dr. Arora is the recipient of several awards, including the 2016 Best Paper Award at the International Conference of the Biometrics Special Interest Group, and the 2012 Best Poster Award at the International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems. In 2017, Sunpreet also received the honorable Civilian Citation from the Lansing Police Department and Meritous Service Award from the Michigan State University Police Department for providing assistance in unlocking a murder victim’s smartphone using synthetically generated 2D and 3D fingerprints of the victim.

His research has been featured in several national and international media outlets, such as Forbes, MIT Technology Review, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Multimedia, NASA Tech Briefs and BBC UK. He served on the program committee of International Conference on Identity, Security and Behavior Analysis (ISBA IEE) 2018, Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Biometrics Workshop 2019, and is a demo co-chair of the International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB) 2020.

Thesis

  • Arora, S.S. (2016). Fingerprint Recognition: Contributions to Latent Matching and 3D Fingerprint Target Generation. Michigan State University, Ph.D. thesis.
  • Arora, S.S. (2012). Emerging Challenges in Iris Recognition. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology-Delhi, B.T. thesis.

Journals

  • Engelsma, J., Arora, S. S., Jain, A. K., & Paulter, N. G. (2018). Universal 3D Wearable Fingerprint Targets: Advancing Fingerprint Reader Evaluations. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 13(6), 1564-1578.
  • Arora, S. S.,  Jain, A. K., and Paulter, N. G. (2017) "Gold Fingers: 3D Targets for Evaluating Capacitive Readers", IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 12 (9), 2067-2077.
  • Jain, A. K., Arora, S. S., Cao, K., Best-Rowden, L., & Bhatnagar, A. (2017). Fingerprint Recognition of Young Children. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 12(7), 1501–1514.
  • Arora, S. S., Cao, K., Jain, A. K., & Paulter, N. G. (2016). Design and Fabrication of 3D Fingerprint Targets. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 11(10), 2284–2297.
  • Arora, S. S., Liu, E., Cao, K., & Jain, A. K. (2014). Latent Fingerprint Matching: Performance Gain via Feedback from Exemplar Prints. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 36(12), 2452–2465.

Conferences

  • Chugh, T., Arora, S., Jain, A., & Paulter, N. (2017). Benchmarking Fingerprint Minutiae Extractors. International Conference of the Biometrics Special Interest Group (BIOSIG).
  • Arora, S. S., Jain, A. K., & Paulter, N. G. (2016). 3D Whole Hand Targets: Evaluating Slap and Contactless Fingerprint Readers. International Conference of the Biometrics Special Interest Group (BIOSIG).
  • Jain, A. K., Arora, S. S., Best-Rowden, L., Cao, K., Sudhish, P. S., Bhatnagar, A., & Koda, Y. (2016). Giving Infants an Identity. International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD).
  • Arora, S., Cao, K., Jain, A., & Michaud, G. (2015). Crowd Powered Latent Fingerprint Identification: Fusing AFIS with Examiner Markups. International Conference on Biometrics (ICB).
  • Jain, A. K., Cao, K., & Arora, S. S. (2014). Recognizing infants and toddlers using fingerprints: Increasing the vaccination coverage. IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB).
  • Arora, S. S., Cao, K., Jain, A. K., & Paulter, N. G. (2014). 3D Fingerprint Phantoms. International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR).
  • Liu, E., Arora, S., Cao, K., & Jain, A. (2013). A Feedback Paradigm for Latent Fingerprint Matching, IAPR/IEEE 6th International Conference on Biometrics (ICB).
  • Arora, S., Vatsa, M., Singh, R., & Jain, A. (2012). On Iris Camera Interoperability, IEEE Fifth International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS).
  • Arora, S. S., Vatsa, M., Singh, R., & Jain, A. (2012). Iris recognition under alcohol influence: A preliminary study. IAPR International Conference on Biometrics (ICB).

Technical reports

  • Jain,, A. K., Pankanti, S., Nandakumar, K., Prabhakar, S., Arora, S. S., Namboodiri, A. M., & Ross, S. (2018). Global ID: Biometrics for Billions of Identities. MSU Technical Report, MSU-CSE-18-2.
  • Jain, A. K., Arora, S. S., Best-Rowden, L., Cao, K., Sudhish, P. S., & Bhatnagar, A. (2015). Biometrics for Child Vaccination and Welfare: Persistence of Fingerprint Recognition for Infants and Toddlers. MSU Technical Report, MSU-CSE-15-7.

Pending patents

  • Arora, S. S., Wagner, K., Sheets, J., & Best-Rowden, L. (2019). A dynamic learning system for intelligent authentication. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2019014331. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Starr, E., Olson, D. F., Dawson, A., Jimenez, J., Sisodiya, A.. … Lohtia, S. (2019). Authentication Based on Biometric Identification Parameter of an Individual for Payment Transaction. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2019013151. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Wagner, K., Arora, S. S., & Best-Rowden, L. (2018). Privacy protecting de-duplication. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018052393. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Sheets, J. F., Wagner, K., Arora, S. S., Best-Rowden, L., & Jiang, C. (2018). Server-assisted privacy protecting biometric comparison. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018043656. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Sheets, J. F., Arora, S. S., Best-Rowden, L., & Wagner, K. (2018). Facial anti-spoofing method using variances in image properties. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018041795. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Arora, S. S., Wagner, K., & Sheets, J. F. (2018). Efficient hands-free interaction using biometrics. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018044139. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Blackhurst, K., Wagner, K., Sheets, J. F., Jiang, C., & Arora, S. S. (2018). Use of biometrics and privacy preserving methods to authenticate account holders online. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018043872. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Arora, S. S., Best-Rowden, L., & Wagner, K. (2018). Distributed biometric comparison framework. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2018023365. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
  • Arora, S. S., & Wagner, K. (2017). System, method and computer program product for authenticating identification documents. U.S. Patent No. PCT US2017054898. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.