About the IAPP

In addition to serving as Associate Director for Emerging Technologies in NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Elham Tabassi leads NIST’s Trustworthy and Responsible AI program that aims to cultivate trust in the design, development, and use of AI technologies by improving measurement science, standards, and related tools in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life.

She has been working on various machine learning and computer vision research projects with applications in biometrics evaluation and standards since she joined NIST in 1999. Tabassi is the principal architect of NIST Fingerprint Image Quality (NFIQ), an international standard for measuring fingerprint image quality which has been deployed in many large-scale biometric applications worldwide. Among her other roles at NIST, Tabassi has served as ITL Chief of Staff.

She is a member of the National AI Resource Research Task Force, the US Government’s AI Standards Coordinator, a senior member of IEEE, and a fellow of Washington Academy of Sciences. In September 2023, Tabassi was named by TIME magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in AI."