Founding Partners

NexID Biometrics, LLC, was formed in December 2005 by four partners, Bojan Cukic, Lawrence Hornak, Michael Schuckers, and Stephanie Schuckers. Through their collaborations over eight years, the team has extensive expertise in the biometric field, in addition to being experts in related areas of computer science, electrical engineering, statistics, and biomedical engineering.

Dr. Bojan Cukic

is an associate professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University, where he also serves as co-director of the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR). He is actively involved in research and development in biometrics and computer security, software engineering for high-assurance systems and dependable computing. Dr. Cukic published over a 100 articles in academic journals, magazines and conference proceedings. He received a US National Science Foundation Career award and a Tycho Brahe Award for research excellence from the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance. He is currently an associate editor of the Empirical Software Engineering Journal, has served as a guest editor for November/December issue of IEEE Software magazine, and as the program chair for major international conferences, including 2005 IEEE Symposium on Distributed Reliable Computing and 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering. Dr. Cukic received his MS and PhD in computer science from the University of Houston.

Dr. Lawrence A. Hornak

is a professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University. Dr. Hornak is the founder and current co-director of the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center in biometrics. His primary research explores physiological and molecular biometric sensors and systems, MEM/NEM systems, and technology co-integration for novel sensor functionality. Prior to joining WVU in 1991, he spent nine years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ researching sensors and integrated electronic and photonic systems. Dr. Hornak has managed over $6M in research awards including an NSF National Young Investigator Award in support of his mixed technology systems work, and has been awarded a Byrd Professorship for his research spanning biometrics and nanoscience. Dr. Hornak has completed one edited book, several book chapters, and has over 90 journal and conference papers. He is a member of IEEE, OSA, and SPIE. Dr. Hornak holds a B.S. in Physics from SUNY Binghamton, an M.E. from Stevens Inst. of Technology a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers.

Dr. Michael E. Schuckers

is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at St. Lawrence University (SLU) in Canton, NY. His research specialization is statistical performance evaluation of bioauthentication devices. Funded by the National Science Foundation, he is a leading researcher in the determination of the sample sizes for testing of biometric devices. As part of this research work, Michael was one of the founding members of the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center at West Virginia University. He has received several grants from CITeR since its inception. One such CITeR project developed, in conjunction with C. J. Knickerbocker at SLU, the PRESS freeware for statistical summaries of biometric testing. This software has been utilized by testing agencies internationally for determining test parameters and analysis of evaluation results. In addition to his research, he has consulted on test design and analysis for the Department of Defense's Biometrics Fusion Center and the National Biometrics Security Project. A member of the American Statistical Association, he has authored several articles on statistical methods for evaluating biometrics. A graduate of Penn State, he also holds graduate degrees in Statistics Iowa State University and The University of Michigan.

Dr. Stephanie Schuckers

is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clarkson University. She arrived in 2002 from West Virginia University where she was a faculty member in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department. Schuckers received the B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Iowa in 1992. As a Whitaker Foundation Graduate Fellow, she received the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1994 and 1997, respectively. Her primary research interest is the application of modern digital signal processing to biomedical signals. Her work is funded from various sources, including National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, National Institute of Health, and private industry.