Reza Derakhshani, professor in the UMKC School of Computing and Engineering, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Derakhshani is best known for leading the development of a biometric technology that makes the eye the only password needed to secure smartphones and mobile devices. The product is known as Eyeprint and was commercialized by the Kansas City-based startup EyeVerify. EyeVerify was acquired by Ant Financial Services Group in 2016 for a reported $100 million. The company is maintaining its headquarters in Kansas City and has been doing business as ZOLOZ since 2017. Derakhshani continues consulting as EyeVerify’s chief scientist while maintaining his faculty position at UMKC.

At UMKC, Derakhshani heads the Computational Intelligence and Bio-Identification Technologies Laboratory (CIBIT). The lab’s research focus is ocular and vascular biometrics, mobile security, anti-spoofing and machine learning. CIBIT is also engaged in developing related novel hardware platforms for computational imaging schemes as related to biometrics, in addition to human-computer interaction.

The 2020 Class of Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors will be inducted at the NAI 10th annual meeting in June 2021. UMKC Chancellor Mauli Agrawal nominated Derakhshani as an NAI Fellow. The National Academy of Inventors is a member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with more than 4,000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide.