Roy Maxion, research professor in the Computer Science and Machine Learning departments, will receive the 2019 Test of Time Award at the IEEE/International Federation for Information Processing Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2019), held June 24–27 in Portland, Oregon.

The award from DSN — whose primary concern is the reliability of computer systems — recognizes a 2009 research paper that used machine learning to analyze peoples' typing rhythms in a process known as keystroke dynamics. Keystroke dynamics can identify users based on their typing styles, and can also be used in the medical arena to study neurological disorders that affect the human motor system.

The paper, "Comparing Anomaly-Detection Algorithms for Keystroke Dynamics," was co-written with Maxion's Ph.D. student Kevin Killourhy and was the first in behavioral/keystroke biometrics to develop a reproducible evaluation method. It also measured the performance of a range of statistical and machine-learning algorithms against a common reference data set so that results could be compared soundly, revealing that very simple classification techniques could achieve top performance.

The Test of Time Award, which DSN is presenting for the first time this year, recognizes outstanding papers published in DSN at least 10 years ago that have had a sustained and important impact on the theory and/or practice of dependable systems and networks computing research.