Identity Solutions Symposium and
Workshop planned for February at ASU

Dec. 1, 2006 -- Arkansas State University in Jonesboro will host the Identity Solutions Symposium and Workshop on Wednesday-Thursday, Feb. 21-22, 2007, in the Reng Student Services Center and Student Union. Congressman Marion Berry will be the event’s keynote speaker.

The symposium will serve as a first step in creating the Delta Center for Identity Solutions at ASU. The symposium is sponsored by a grant from Arkansas Science & Technology Authority (ASTA), according to Dr. Elizabeth Hood, ASU associate vice chancellor for research. She also noted that ASU will collaborate with the University of Arkansas and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on this project. Symposium co-chairs are Dr. John Talburt of Information Science, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Dr. Dale Thompson of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, and Dr. Farhad Moeeni, Computer and Information Technology, ASU.

Ultimately, the Delta Center for Identity Solutions will serve the state of Arkansas and its various industries.

The first step in the creation of the Delta Center for Identity Solutions is researching, writing, and submitting grant proposals to various funding agencies, explained Dr. Farhad Moeeni. Moeeni is the project manager for the center. In addition, Moeeni and Hood are the project’s principle investigators and oversee the project budget.

“The symposium brings together more than 30 experts from academia, industry, and government to address various aspects of automatic identification technologies such as radio frequency ID (RFID), smart cards, biometrics, and bar coding. The subject of identification relates to almost every discipline from business, to information technology, to healthcare, to food and agriculture, to social science and to engineering, because all are technology users, providers, or critics. For that reason, the symposium has a cross-disciplinary approach,” said Moeeni.  “We need the involvement of faculty from a variety of disciplines in writing grant proposals to fund the Delta Center for Identity Solutions.”

Dr. Len Frey, dean of ASU’s College of Business, notes, “The College of Business at ASU has been at the forefront of identification technologies among business schools. We are very pleased to support the creation of the Delta Center for Identity Solutions and the upcoming symposium, as businesses are among the primary users of the technologies.”

“Identification technologies are becoming embedded in all types of goods, including food and agricultural products,” says Dr. Greg Phillips, dean of the Colleges of Agriculture, Science and Mathematics, and Engineering. “With the recent awareness of how vulnerable we may be to intentional or unintentional breaches of safety and security, these new automated identification technologies provide an opportunity to track food and agricultural products throughout their handling and transport. These tracking systems will also help to improve personal security as well as the security of commercial transactions,” Phillips continued.

The symposium is open to the public for a low registration fee. Students, faculty, and staff of the three universities and their affiliates will enjoy a preferred rate. For more information and for registration, please visit the symposium’s website, http://events.astate.edu/identitysymposium. If interested in participating, please contact Farhad Moeeni (moeeni@astate.edu.)

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