More than 300 researchers and graduate students are working or studying at CyLab this year, making it among the largest cybersecurity training centers in the world. It offers more than 50 courses in security and privacy and has trained more than 75,000 people.

Biometrics, the science of using hard-to-mask physical attributes — like facial characteristics, fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA — is just one specialty. CyLab is also engaged in broader uses for A.I., cryptography, network security and an array of other cybersecurity skills.

One of the first times Professor Savvides and his group used his facial-recognition technology for something besides research was just after the 2015 Boston Marathon bombing. His lab took the blurry, low-resolution, surveillance image of the suspected bomber released by the F.B.I. and, using A.I. technology, reconstructed the image and sent it to the bureau.

The next morning, the identity of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of the bombing, was revealed. Professor Savvides doesn’t know whether his reconstruction helped the F.B.I., but “we were extremely surprised to see the resemblance to Tsarnaev that was constructed from the very low resolution, pixelated face that even our human brain cannot comprehend,” he said.

Professor Savvides was also happy to demonstrate another gee-whiz technology — long-distance iris scanning. Rather than requiring that an eye be placed directly up to a scanner, the device he helped invent looks like a very large camera lens with a smaller one on top and wings of infrared lights on either side. It can identify people by their irises from as far as 40 feet away.

Like fingerprints, each person’s iris is unique; it stays the same as we age, and unlike fingerprints, cannot be scratched or covered up in some way short of removing the eye altogether