Skip to main content
Nandakumar is 2008 CSE Most Outstanding Graduate Student

Nandakumar is 2008 CSE Most Outstanding Graduate Student



Karthik Nandakumar



Karthik Nandakumar has been named the 2008 Most Outstanding Graduate Student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Michigan State University.

Nandakumar will receive his PhD in Computer Science with a 4.0 GPA in May 2008, under the guidance of University Distinguished Professor Anil K. Jain. His PhD dissertation is titled "Multibiometric Systems: Fusion Strategies and Template Security." He received his BS in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, India (2002); MS in Computer Science and Engineering (2005) and MS in Statistics (2007) from Michigan State University.

The emerging and challenging field of biometric recognition has benefited from Nandakumar’s scholarly efforts. His research focuses on methods to improve the accuracy and security of current biometric systems. This is achieved by (i) fusion of multiple sources of biometric information (e.g., face and fingerprints) to obtain higher recognition accuracy, and (ii) methods for securing stored biometric data (template).

Nandakumar is the co-author of Handbook of Multibiometrics, Springer, and has published his research in the best quality journals in his field, including the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. He received the 2008 Fitch Beach Outstanding Graduate Research Award for outstanding research in a PhD program in the MSU College of Engineering.

Besides his exceptional research, Nandakumar is a model scholar and citizen. He has mentored several undergraduate and graduate students in the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing (PRIP) Laboratory. He has always been available to make presentations to visitors of all ages and backgrounds, from high school students to distinguished seminar speakers. Nandakumar is currently a Research Fellow at the internationally renowned Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore.

(Date Posted: 2008-03-27)