Outstanding Technical Achievement - National Laboratory

Dr. Hector Santos-Villalobos is a senior member of the research and development staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and leads the Biometrics and Identity Research Group.

He’s a leader in the fields of biometrics, computational imaging, machine learning, and advanced imaging technologies, and he’s responsible for significant breakthroughs in the new and growing field of identity science.

Hector’s most recent advances center on imaging the human iris – long a challenge industry wide. He met this challenge by building a detailed digital model that’s enabled his team to map every potential path for light rays along the iris. He then incorporated high-speed computing based on these results to render the iris from any viewpoint, including off-angle images for recognition.

Dr. Santos-Villalobos’s also developed a plen-optic camera system with an array of micro lenses that can capture a series of images at once, even under challenging conditions. Machine-learning algorithms scan the photos to fuse them into clear, identifiable images for recognition of facial features, with an accuracy rate of 90 percent or better.

He holds six patents – five related to his biometrics and identity-science work – and has published or presented more than 40 papers in journals and at conferences and proceedings.

He also plays a critical role in representing some of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s most important national security technologies to senior intelligence and Department of Defense community partners.

In his infrequent downtime, Dr. Santos-Villalobos continues to pursue scientific projects that he finds interesting, including an ongoing study on detecting human deception, a goal that has been voraciously sought after since the dawn of humanity.

Dr. Santos-Villalobos’s many honors include a 2011 Itek Award from the Society for Imaging and Science Technology, and multiple scholarships, including the Midwest Crossroads Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate Scholarship and the Frederic Miller Graduate Scholarship. He also holds a senior membership in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Growing up in Ciales, Puerto Rico as the son of a pharmaceutical technician and a social worker, Dr. Santos-Villalobos credits the day that his father brought home a personal computer and a high school science teacher lent him a BASIC programming book as the moments that he began his road to his current career.

Learning to code, he became hungry to increase his knowledge and soon Dr. Santos-Villalobos was on his way to earning B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University.

When he’s not working on his latest project, Dr. Santos-Villalobos calls himself a “frustrated musician,” practicing his guitar and helping raise a son on the verge of turning 4 and an 18- month-old daughter.