Research Overview

Research Overview: My research focuses on leveraging the proliferation of smart devices and advancements in data science to design, implement, and evaluate systems that enhance our cyberspace safety, promote societal health, and facilitate seamless and secure interaction with computing or wearable devices (see Figure 1). The sensors embedded in smart devices can record almost every aspect of our lives, including behavioral activities (e.g., walking, swiping, typing, browsing, etc.), health conditions (e.g., vitals–pressure, temperature, pulse, stress level; seizure; Parkinson; fall detection in elderly; etc.), and machine interactions (e.g., flying drone via remote control).  The ability to precisely record these life patterns has opened several doors for research, development, and innovation.  My focus is on solving human-centered problems.  More specifically, I focus on five different dimensions: security, privacy, forensics, health monitoring, and human-computer interaction (HCI). Security: the focus is on designing, implementing, and rigorously evaluating behavioral biometric-based authentication and detection systems. Privacy focuses on finding what information one’s behavioral patterns can reveal. Forensics: how could law enforcement agencies use the behavioral patterns that criminals leave while committing a crime? Health monitoring: In this dimension, the focus is on monitoring health conditions, such as seizures, fall detection, and Parkinson's, and generating appropriate notifications or responses. HCI: In this dimension, the idea is to develop prototypes that help individuals with limited abilities, especially those who can’t use traditional HCI devices, make human-computer interaction seamless (touchless, unobtrusive, non-invasive).  The field has attracted a tremendous amount of funding. It will continue to be one of the favorites among researchers, funding agencies, and investors, making it a $ 76 billion industry by 2027 [1–6].  

Previous and ongoing projects: The outcomes of my research have been published in highly regarded conferences, journals, and transactions [7–16]. One of the first publications to investigate PIN-based authentication security concluded that it is remarkably easy to infer smartphone PINs from publicly recorded videos [16]. In the next project, we explored the possibility of continuous identity authentication using swiping, typing, and body movement patterns [10, 11, 13, 14]. Simultaneously, we investigated whether it is possible to circumvent behavioral biometric (swiping and gait) )-based authentication via spoofing [7, 12, 15]. The current research projects focus on the inference of soft biometric markers (typing hand, gender, computing and non-computing background, age, height, and weight) from keystrokes, swiping, and mouse movement patterns [9], touch-less typing using head-movement-based gestures [8], spoofing lie-detectors based on keystroke dynamics, development of more robust performance metrics, developing robust authentication systems, and early detection of Parkinson’s disease via wearables.

Solution approaches: The solutions span multiple disciplines, including signal processing, information fusion, human-in-the-loop systems, robotics, statistical analysis, and machine learning. Primarily, I have used statistical analysis, statistical tests, Fourier transform, Wavelet transforms, principal component analysis, contextual machine learning, and the fusion of information at data, feature, and decision levels. Additionally, I have utilized robotics to design and program robots that can swipe like humans, rendering existing swiping-based authentication susceptible to robot-based adversarial attacks.

Funding sources: Most of my research works have been supported by competitive research grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [1], the National Science Foundation [3], and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). While working as a research assistant under these grants, I have gained a fair understanding of writing proposals, designing data collection protocols, obtaining approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), conducting data collection, designing and prototyping systems, and writing reports and research articles.

Multiple opportunities to work with a diverse group of researchers during these projects and after their completion have made me an excellent team player. I strongly believe that forging collaborations is vital for the advancement of science. I currently collaborate with the Multimodal Digital Media Analysis Lab (MIDAS) lab at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi, and the Computer Science at Texas Tech University. The collaborations have resulted in good quality publications [8, 9] and research proposals. I plan to collaborate to secure external funding and tackle challenging research problems that matter.

For future research projects and proposals, I plan to continue my current work and seek funding to support my research. Additionally, I emphasize fairness, accountability, and transparency in the system I am currently prototyping. Although with limited success, I have first-hand experience in writing research proposals. I secured funding ($18,400) to support five students during Summer 2020. Additionally, I am actively participating in the execution of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, run by the Mozilla Foundation, this semester. My first grant application received excellent feedback from the reviewers at AFRL/RISC - Advanced Planning and Autonomous C2 Systems Branch, Wright-Patterson AFB. The funding was denied due to institutional support issues.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in the Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Additionally, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA, as well as to funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, run by the Mozilla Foundation, and the Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in the Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Besides, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA besides funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge run by Mozilla Foundation and Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research by Google.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Besides, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA besides funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge run by Mozilla Foundation and Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research by Google.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Besides, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA besides funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge run by Mozilla Foundation and Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research by Google.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Besides, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA besides funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge run by Mozilla Foundation and Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research by Google.

Additionally, I submitted two research proposals, one to the U.S.–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) in April 2020 and the other to Duolingo’s Competitive Research Grant Proposals, 2021 as Co-Principal Investigator. I plan to target Computer and Information Science and Engineering Research Initiation Initiative (CRII); Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) in Directorate for Computer Information Science Engineering, Smart Health, and Wellbeing (SHW). Besides, I aim to submit proposals to the Warfighter Analytics Using Smartphones for Health (WASH) initiative of DAPRA besides funding opportunities for the Responsible Computer Science Challenge run by Mozilla Foundation and Google Grant to Engage Underrepresented Students in Computing Research by Google.

References

1. D. A. R. P. Agency, Context-aware active authentication using touch gestures, typing patterns, and body movement, in https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1005650.pdf, 2014-16.

2. D. I. S. Agency, Disa wants to know that it’s you carrying your phone, in https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/2019/11/04/disa-wants-to-know-that-its-you-carrying-your-phone/, 2015-19.

3. N. S. Foundation, Twc: Small: Collaborative: Spoof-resistant smartphone authentication using cooperating wearables, in https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1527795, 2015-19.

4. A. Mascellino, Disa announces digital identity, credential and access management tool, in https://www.biometricupdate.com/202010/disa-announces-digital-identity-credential-and-access-management-toolz,  2020.

5. A. Mehra, Biometric system market worth $68.6 billion by 2025, in https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/biometric-technologies.asp, 2020.

6. G. Newswire, Global biometrics industry report 2020: Set to reach $76.6 billion by 2027 - includes an assessment of the coronavirus’ impact on the industry, in https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/27/2022258/0/en/Global-Biometrics-Industry-Report-2020-Set-to-Reach-76-6- Billion-by-2027-Includes-an-Assessment-of-the-Coronavirus-Impact-on-the-Industry.html, 2020.

7. R Kumar, C. Isik, and V. Phoha, Treadmill assisted gait spoofing (tags): An emerging threat to wearable sensor-based gait authentication, in ACM Journal of Digital Threats: Research and Practice, ACM, 2020.

8. S. Rustagi, A. Garg, P. R. Anand, R. Kumar, Y. Kumar, and R. R. Shah, Touchless typing using head movement-based gestures, in IEEE Sixth International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM), 2020.

9. V. Udandarao, M. Agrawal, R. Kumar, and R. R. Shah, On the inference of soft biometrics from typing patterns collected in a multi-device environment, in IEEE Sixth International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM), 2020.

10. R Kumar, P. Kundu, and V. Phoha, Continuous authentication using one-class classifiers and their fusion, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Identity, Security and Behavior Analysis (ISBA), 2018.

11. R Kumar, P. Kundu, D. Shukla, and V. Phoha, Continuous user authentication via unlabeled phone movement patterns, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB), The top tier biometric conference, 2017.

12. A Serwadda, V. Phoha, Z. Wang, R Kumar, and D. Shukla, Toward robotic robbery on the touch screen, in ACM Transactions on Information and System Security (TISSEC), now ACM TOPS, top ACM transactions on privacy and security, ACM, 2016.

13. R Kumar, V. Phoha, and R. Raina, "Authenticating users through their arm movement patterns", in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (arXiv.cs.CV), https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.02211v1, 2016.

14. R Kumar, V. Phoha, and A. Serwadda, Continuous authentication of smartphone users by fusing typing, swiping, and phone movement patterns, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems (BTAS), A premier conference on biometrics, 2016.

15. R Kumar, V. Phoha, and A. Jain, Treadmill attack on gait-based authentication systems, in Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems (BTAS), A premier conference on biometrics, 2015.

16. D Shukla, R, Kumar, A. Serwadda, and V. Phoha, Beware, your hands reveal your secrets! In Proceedings of the ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2014.