This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.
Research Title:
Developing an Evaluation Framework for Digital Watermarking Technologies
The work will entail:
This project focuses on contributing to the development of a study on digital watermarking technologies. The student(s) will explore how watermarking techniques are used for protecting digital content and the challenges involved in evaluating their robustness, imperceptibility, and effectiveness. The project aims to build foundational understanding and draft an initial evaluation strategy, supporting broader work at NIST in digital content integrity.
Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:
● Conduct a literature survey on state-of-the-art watermarking techniques (image, video, audio, and document-based).
● Familiarize with existing watermarking tools and open-source implementations.
● Understand NIST’s role and ongoing efforts in digital content protection and cryptographic standards.
● Propose evaluation metrics, transformation pipelines (stress-testing such as compression, cropping, rotation, noise, etc.), and potential testbeds for watermark robustness testing.
● Draft a preliminary evaluation plan or roadmap that could guide future benchmarking activities.
Deliverables:
● Annotated bibliography of key watermarking research.
● Summary report of explored tools and their features.
● Draft evaluation framework document (with proposed metrics and methodology).
● Prototype implementation or scripts for transformation and detection scenarios.
Qualifications:
● Background in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
● Education level: graduate student or higher.
● Strong interest in digital media security, cryptography, or multimedia processing.
● Experience with Python, MATLAB, or image/audio processing tools is preferred.
● Familiarity with scientific reading and technical writing.
The university is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer that does not unlawfully discriminate in any of its programs or activities on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.