David J. Haas

David J. Haas received his BA in Physics and PhD in Biophysics at the State University of NY at Buffalo. For the next five years, he performed basic research in protein crystallography at several institutions in Europe and the United States. This basic research led to liquid nitrogen cryo-cooling, whereby macromolecular crystals reduced radiation damage during X-ray analysis. Whereas this technique was years ahead, today cryo-crystallography is used at every Synchrotron worldwide for Structural Biology. In 1970, he joined Philips Electronic Instruments in Mt. Vernon, NY, as principal X-ray scientist, designing some of the first airport X-ray scanners used worldwide during the 1970s. Conceiving the idea of self-expiring visitor badges (changes color in one day to prevent reuse), David and his wife, Sandra, formed Temtec Inc. in 1981 in Suffern NY, and manufactured visitor and temporary IDs for more than 20 years under the brand name TEMPbadge. The company was sold in 2002. Besides many scientific papers and articles, David and Sandra have dozens of patents to their credit. The first edition of his book Personal Identification - Its Modern Development and Security Implications was published in 2009 by ASIS Intl. and has been updated substantially with this second edition.