Formation of CITeR-UA to Add Deception and Credibility Assessment to the Center for Identification Technology Research

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Arizona (UA) is partnering with the Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) at West Virginia University (WVU) to create a second research site that focuses on deception and credibility assessment. This will strengthen CITeR by complementing the center's research on identification and authentication by bringing together faculty, industry, and government agencies with interests in detecting deception, identifying individuals who pose security threats, and developing tools for assessing individual credibility. The urgent need to better understand deception and its detection was unassailable long before 9/11 brought into high relief national security threats posed by terrorist plots and deceptions. The daily reporting of fraudulent business practices, political chicanery, telemarketing scams, internet predation, and identity theft has only served to reinforce the need for concerted attention to this critical and multifaceted topic. Yet at present there is little coordination of effort among government agencies or in the academic community to address issues related to identification of deception. Moreover, the topic begs for a multidisciplinary approach, so that technical expertise can be integrated with rigorous social science research to derive solutions and detection tools. CITeR-UA addresses these needs by assembling a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration among researchers and graduate students whose skills and interests intersect with those at CITeR-WVU. UA is uniquely equipped to lead the deception and credibility aspect of this effort with its state-of-the-art DOD-funded Deception Detection Laboratory for conducting experiments and its Integrated Multimedia System with terabyte server for capturing, editing, storing, and analyzing multimedia data.