Panagiotis Karampelas Editor & Author

Thirimachos Bourlai is an associate professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Engineering at WVU. He also serves as an adjunct assistant professor in the WVU School of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology, the Department of Forensic and Investigative Science, and the Department of Chemical Engineering (Biomedical Engineering). He is also the founder (2010) and director of the Multi-Spectral Imagery Lab.

After earning his Ph.D. in face recognition and completing a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Surrey (U.K.), Bourlai completed a second post-doc in a joint project between Methodist Hospital and the University of Houston, in the fields of thermal imaging and human-based computational physiology. He joined the staff at WVU in 2009 serving as a visiting professor and later as a research assistant professor in the Lane Department until August 2017.

Bourlai served and has been invited to serve as chair at a number of biometrics conferences including ICB, BTAS, IJCB, FG, SPIE, ISS World Americas, IDGA, ACI and the Biometrics Institute. He has served as a member on technical program committees for other primary computer vision- and biometrics-focused conferences. Several governmental agencies, organizations and academic institutions have invited Bourlai to present his work, including the CIA, NSA, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Army (various divisions), FBI, Amazon, SRC, Biometrics Institute, DSA, NLETS, IDGA, FedID, ConnectID, the Biometrics Summit Conference, the IEEE Signal Processing Society, University of Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, Rutgers University, University of Houston, and the University of Newcastle (UK).

He is also a Series Editor of the Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications) book-series by Springer (2015 - current), an Associate Editor of the IET Electronics Letters Journal, an Editorial Manager of the SPIE Newsroom Magazine, an IEEE Biometrics Council VP on Education as of 1/1/2020, an Advisory Board Member (and Chair) of the IDGA Biometrics and Law Enforcement Conference (yearly conference at Washington DC), and a member of the Academic Research and Innovation Expert Group of the Biometrics Institute. 

Panagiotis Karampelas holds a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and a Master of Science degree from the Department of Informatics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens with specialization in “High Performance Algorithms”. He also holds a Bachelor degree in Mathematics from the same University majoring in Applied Mathematics. He has worked as an associate researcher in numerous European funded research projects in the area of Information Society Technologies Programme practicing his expertise in User Interface Design, Usability Evaluation and Application Development. He has also worked for several years as a user interface designer, usability expert and senior developer in several IT companies designing and implementing large-scale research and commercial information systems. Then he joined Hellenic American University as Assistant Professor teaching human computer interaction, programming, managing information systems and database management in the Graduate and Undergraduate programs. Currently, he is with the Department of Informatics and Computers, at the Hellenic Air Force Academy teaching courses to pilots and engineers. His areas of interest include Data Mining, Social Network Analysis, Counterterrorism Informatics, Programming, Mobile Application Development, Information Visualization, Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Neural Networks, Power Transmission and Distribution Systems. He has published a number of books and research articles in his major areas of interests in international journals and conferences. He serves as a Series Editor in the Book Series Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications and as an Associate Editor in the Social Network Analysis and Mining journal. He also serves as program committee member in a large number of scientific journals and international conferences in his fields of interests such as the European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (EISIC) and the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM).

Vishal M. Patel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining Hopkins, he was an A. Walter Tyson Assistant Professor in the Department of ECE at Rutgers University and a member of the research faculty at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).  His current research interests include signal processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition with applications in biometrics and imaging.  He has received a number of awards including the 2016 ONR Young Investigator Award, the 2016 Jimmy Lin Award for Invention, A. Walter Tyson Assistant Professorship Award, Best Paper Award at IEEE AVSS 2017 & 2019, Best Paper Award at IEEE BTAS 2015, Honorable Mention Paper Award at IAPR ICB 2018, two Best Student Paper Awards at IAPR ICPR 2018, and Best Poster Awards at BTAS 2015 and 2016. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Biometrics Compendium, Pattern Recognition Journal, and serves on the Information Forensics and Security Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.  He is serving as the  Vice  President (Conferences)  of  the  IEEE  Biometrics  Council.  He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Pi Mu Epsilon, and Phi Beta Kappa.