Nicole Spaun | Adjunct Professor
George Mason University

Dr. Spaun has a bachelor’s degree in Planetary Sciences from Boston University and her MS and PhD in Geology and Geophysics from Brown University. She was a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center when, concerned by the attacks of 9/11, she changed agencies to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Using her image analysis skills as a Forensic Examiner, she specialized in biometrics and developed an FBI training class for facial comparisons that the FBI still teaches today. She then became the first Biometric Program Manager for US Army Europe. After that, Dr. Spaun worked for IDEMIA as their Principal Biometric Expert and then Program Manager for Image Recognition, specializing in face and tattoo products and end-user training. Since 2020 Dr. Spaun has taught graduate students Face and Biometric Pattern Matching at George Mason University as an Adjunct Professor in Forensic Science. Additionally, this year Dr. Spaun began Biometric Forensics Group, an LLC focusing on facial comparison training and expert services. She is an associate of the Facial Identification Scientific Working Group (FISWG) and the International Association of Identification (IAI)’s Facial Identification Subcommittee, and in 2019 proudly won a Security Industry Association (SIA) Women in Biometrics Award.