Abstract: Under the global threat of counterfeiting, industries and governments have moved to protect their supply and distributions chains. Blockchains and other forms of secure, distributed ledgers are increasingly used to contain creation and tracking data for essential components. But a secure ledger is only as useful as the data that went into it. A weak point in many such systems is ensuring that the data in the blockchain applies to (and continues to apply to) the intended physical object. Alitheon provides the missing piece: FeaturePrinting creates an unspoofable, unbreakable link between the object itself and the data about the object stored in the secure ledger. It does not require marking or modifying the object in any way but using only the native features of the object, FeaturePrinting can with nearly perfect certainty identify which object was FeaturePrinted, even if it is one of millions, and use that information to unlock the secure ledger. This talk will address the basics of this approach and the reasons why using it greatly increases the security of systems employing it.

Bio: Chief Scientist, cofounder, and director of Alitheon: Ross is a mathematician with a long history of scientific and technological innovation and discovery. As a mathematician for Jet Propulsion Lab's Advanced Project Group he invented the “Prime Rib Curves" for mission design that enable NASA to calculate optimal orbital transfers between any two solar system bodies. For this work the asteroid 6435 DAVEROSS was named after him. While at JPL, Ross designed orbits for multiple NASA missions, including Galileo, Saturn Orbiter/Titan Probe, Solar Polar, and numerous comet and asteroid intercept missions that flew over the subsequent thirty years. In addition, Ross designed a new kind of orbit for optimal capture of interplanetary spacecraft called the double lunar flyby.