User Profile

Computer Science

Virginia Commonwealth University

Emanuela Marasco's research interests involve pattern recognition and machine learning, image processing and computer vision, biometrics. She is passionate about authentication methods based on biometric systems which are widely deployed in high level security applications such as access control to computer networks and at the border and immigration services. Her main contribution focuses on addressing vulnerabilities and challenges of such systems through design and development of: (1) anti-spoofing countermeasures in fingerprint recognition systems, (2) algorithms for automatic enhancement of fingerprint sensor interoperability to maintain data independence from underlying device, (3) image de-identification techniques for privacy enhancement, (4) automatic estimation of soft biometrics (e.g., age, gender) from fingerprints and (5) adaptive schemes for human identification based on degraded DNA samples. She was / is PI and co-PI of research projects funded by NSF, DHS and DARPA. Prior the appointment at George Mason University, Marasco was an adjunct professor and a post-doctoral researcher in pattern recognition and biometrics at the University of North Carolina Charlotte, Department of Computer Science. She also was a post-doctoral associate researcher at Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University and at the Center for Identification Technology (CiTeR-NSF). She received a five-year degree (bachelor and M.Sc.) in computer engineering, in March 2006, and a PhD in computer and automation engineering, in December 2010, both at the University of Naples Federico II (Italy).