Biometrics
West Virginia is home to several key federal government agencies, driving early demand for advanced technologies and helping in the development of a significant base of commercial biometrics support companies — firms providing integration, support services, and software development. TechConnectWV’s Biometrics platform focuses primarily on opportunities and applications in biometrics and associated sensing technologies for security and identity verification purposes.
In the foreseeable future, most of the opportunities will be in the near-horizon applications of Security and Defense Systems and Applications. Much can be done in this area with electronic pattern recognition and encryption technologies such as facial recognition, fingerprints, handprints, vascular patterns, and retinal scans.
More “traditional” electronics and software-driven pattern recognition and associated technologies still have significant expansion opportunities.
Over the longer-term, however, the platform should develop and broaden into the other areas listed above. Likewise, over time the application technologies from this platform may extend beyond identity verification of individual humans. The advanced sensing and molecular recognition technologies likely to be developed within West Virginia will have wide-ranging applications in areas as diverse as medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring. However, in the near to mid-term, biometrics will be the main platform focus, especially electronic pattern recognition technology, software, and systems.