This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST recognizes that its research staff may want to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest and, therefore, requires those institutions to be recipients of a PREP award. The PREP program involves staff from a wide range of backgrounds conducting scientific research across various fields. Individuals in this position will perform technical work supporting the collaboration's scientific research.
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 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.
Candidates must be eligible to obtain a Department of Commerce background check for facility access.
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: Postgraduate individual (above bachelor’s degree):
- At least Master student. May be pursuing or finished with masters, or PhD.
- 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.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
The university is an Equal Employment Opportunity 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.