PREP0004166 Digital Watermarking Researcher

Digital Watermarking Framework Researcher

Project Description:

Developing an Evaluation Framework for Digital Watermarking Technologies. 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 a foundational understanding and draft an initial evaluation strategy, supporting broader work at NIST in digital content integrity.

Key Responsibilities: 

• 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

Desired Qualifications: 

• U.S. Citizen preferred
• Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field, or in the final or penultimate years of a Master’s/Ph.D.
• 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

Other Details:

• Full-time: the participant is expected to work 40 hours a week
• Location: the participant will work at the NIST Gaithersburg Campus.
• Duration: this is expected to be a one-year position. Extensions are sometimes granted depending on the availability of funds.