Professor Richard Guest

Richard Guest is Professor of Biometric Technologies in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.

He obtained a BEng (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of York in 1995, followed by a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Kent in 2000.

His research areas include applied artificial intelligence, biometric systems, security, forensics, image processing and feature pattern recognition. He has led numerous research and development projects over the past 25 years, including: the development of mobile facial recognition systems, privacy techniques for securing mobile device background sensors, explainable AI for face verification within a legal setting and novel methods for the forensic verification of hands in mobile images. He has significant research leadership as Principal Investigator of several large national and international projects including EU Marie Słodowska-Curie ITNs, EU and UKRI projects.

He is an appointed member of the UK Home Office Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group advising the Government on the use of biometric and forensic technologies. He has had active involvement with ISO/IEC standardisation processes in the area of biometric data interchange, used in worldwide deployments. He leads the training and education work of the European Association for Biometrics.

Prior to joining Southampton in 2024 he was Deputy Divisional Director of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences and Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Kent.

He is a Chartered Engineer, and Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. He is a Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and an Academic Accreditor for the IET.

Richard Guest holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Kent and a Visiting Researcher position at Purdue University, US.