Dr. Ricanek is the founder and director of the Face Aging Group Research Lab at UNCW where he has been the primary project lead on more than $5 Million in Department of Defense and intelligence funded research since 2003. Dr. Ricanek is the Director for the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies in Identity Sciences (I2SIS) that was awarded in August 2010. He is one of four chosen researchers to form the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Center of Academic Excellence in Identity Sciences (CASIS). He has extensive research background in face recognition technology, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, and machine and computer vision.