Kamil and Štefan successfully defended their PhD theses

The thesis examines the use of hand movements for behavioral biometric identification and authentication under external factors. These factors are not normally considered in lab experiments, but may have a significant impact when deploying biometric solutions in practice. 

In his work, Kamil determined that changing context (e.g. different body postures) during interaction on mobile devices significantly impacts authentication accuracy. He devised a method to isolate biometric features which may subsequently be used to build context-specific models to improve accuracy. Kamil also examined the use of hand gestures in extended reality (XR) environments as a novel and more usable approach for user identification. The approach achieves accuracy comparable with other types of hand movements and scales well with an increasing number of users. 

Lastly, Kamil determined categories of behavioral biometric features and models that are resilient against skilled forgery attacks, in which an attacker observes and attempts to replicate the behavior of a legitimate user. 

The results of the thesis can help increase robustness of behavioral biometric solutions against changing context and attacks, particularly in a world where biometrics are increasingly deployed for multi-factor identification and authentication.

Kamil is a member of our Information Security team.

The thesis deals with the reflection of current forms of philosophy of pragmatism in selected areas of applied ethics, specifically in bioethics, medical ethics, and neuroethics. Štefan focused theoretical research on the question whether pragmatism provides a relevant platform for solving moral problems in medicine. This thesis aims to show the potential of pragmatism in solving problems in the chosen field. The goal is realized by solving the problem of the conceptual-criteria definition of human death.

Philosophy of pragmatism is a unique problem-oriented method, characterized by pluralism, fallibilism, anti-dualism, non-reductive naturalism, and with a close relationship to science. In the work Štefan identified its current and possible future applications, including determining its place and significance in relevant areas of ethics.

Štefan argues that due to its coherence with the cognitive sciences and neurosciences, pragmatism also has the potential to solve neuro-medical problems. He states that several pragmatists are inclined to the irreversible absence of (personal) human consciousness as a conceptually appropriate, but application-wise ambiguous criterion. The content of the thesis strives for the set goal by finding that the philosophy of pragmatism is current and richly represented in various areas of ethics and is relevant and used in solving moral problems in medicine.

Štefan is a member of our Ethics and Human Values in Technology team.