Hello. My name is John Howard. I am a data scientist and biometrics researcher. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Bobby Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University. My thesis was Biometric Pattern Recognition Models for Identifying Subject Specific Match Probability, advised by Dr. Delores Etter.
My research interests are in biometrics, computer vision, machine learning, and testing human machine interfaces. I enjoy working with the R programming language, specifically the dplyr and ggplot packages. I am a steadfast advocate for the concepts of reproducible research and think workflows that involve LaTeX, knitr, and/or RMarkdown are extremely powerful. However, I also enjoy more generic software engineering like using golang and docker to deploy microservice architectures on platforms like Kubernetes.
I am currently the lead data scientist at the Maryland Test Facility, one of the largest AI testing labs in the U.S. My main areas of focus are on performance testing and how we understand and measure the equitability of biometric systems. I am also currently the editor of ISO 19795-10, a (draft) international standard on demographic differentials in biometric systems. In my free time, I also do consulting work and enjoy teaching.
I try to update my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles regularly with news and thoughts about these topics. If you find these interesting please follow along. You can also find a list of upcoming events I will be attending or speaking at here.