Nearly $1M Awarded in Research Grants to SCE Faculty This Quarter

Research ranges from artificial intelligence to app design
Three students in a lab work wearing white overcoats and goggles

In the second half of 2021, faculty from the School of Computing and Engineering have been awarded $906,604 in research funding.

Among those who have received funding is Reza Derakhshani, Ph.D., professor in SCE and head of the university's computational Intelligence and Bio-Identification Technologies Laboratory.

Derakhshani, whose research is primarily focused on eye vein pattern identity verification, was awarded $389,604 from the United States Army for a wearable deep vascular identification system.

Derkhshani 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, known as Eyeprint, was commercialized by the Kansas City-based startup EyeVerify.

The company was acquired by Ant Financial Services Group in 2016 for a reported $100 million. It maintains its headquarters in Kansas City and has been doing business as ZOLOZ since 2017. Derakhshani acts as the company's chief scientist.

In 2020, he was named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Below is a complete list of research funding awarded:

$20,000 to Antonis Stylianou for statistical shape modeling for pediatric knees and ACL injury risk.

$150,000 to ZhiQiang Chen for an augmented reality pilot to demonstrate the flooding risk at 103rd Street in Kansas City, Missouri.

$100,000 to Jejung Lee for the development of GIS-based watershed need classification.

$50,000 to ZhiQiang Chen for HyperGLU: Hyperspectral and Geometric Learning for UAV-enabled plant species identification and localization.

$15,000 to Baek-Young Choi for using artificial intelligence without a data center for reliable wireless sensing and communication for space and extreme environments.

$15,000 to Sejun Song for the education of smart and reliable technologies for a future non-terrestrial network system.

$2,000 to Srvya Chirandas for a budgeting app that will be an outward-facing application that will give customers useful information about their full financial picture.

$55,000 to Amirfarhang Mehidizadeh for identification and understanding of major underlying mechanisms of asphaltene and deposition dynamics.

$389,604 to Reza Derakhshani for DVIS: A wearable deep vascular ID system.

$130,000 to John Kevern for timely and uniform application of curing materials.