i2e in the News: Professor Memon's sleuthing software featured in New York Times

The top image: a competing photo recovery software’s attempt to reassemble a deleted image. The bottom image: Adroit Photo Recovery’s results.

Professor Nasir Memon has created a software application capable of what The New York Times describes as a feat “similar to assembling a million pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with no guiding box-top image.”

When a photo is erased by mistake, or purposely destroyed to hide illegal activity (corporate spying or child pornography, for example), the file’s data is scattered throughout the hard drive, camera card, or other storage device.

Digital Assembly, the company Professor Memon started with two of his Polytechnic Institute of NYU students, Pasha Pal and Kulesh Shanmugasundaram, has developed a way to reassemble the data and restore the image using an advanced technique called file carving.

In the article, “Sleuthing Software Can Reassemble Deleted Photos,” Golden G. Richard III, a professor of computer science at the University of New Orleans, who has also written a file-carving application, said that “automated programs like Dr. Memon’s are highly unusual.”

Digital Assembly is selling the “sleuthing software,” to consumers as Adroit Photo Recovery ($39.99 at digital-assembly.com). A version of the application will also be used by digital investigators at AccessData Corporation in Lindon, Utah. And eventually, law enforcement may adopt the software as a sophisticated forensics tool.

Professor Memon’s company is a tenant in NYU-Poly’s BEST (Brooklyn Enterprise on Science and Technology) business incubator. BEST is a crucial piece of NYU-Poly’s i²e (invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship) initiative. i²e arms faculty and students with the tools, resources, and inspiration to turn their research into applications, products, and services that take flight as faculty- and student-owned companies.

NYU-Poly is opening a Manhattan-based start-up incubator as part of the 11 initiatives Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Wednesday, February 18 to support New York City’s financial services sector and encourage entrepreneurship in the wake of the financial meltdown.

Learn More
The New York Times: Sleuthing Software Can Reassemble Deleted Photos
NYU-Poly News: Mayor Bloomberg announces NYU-Poly business incubator along with 10 other financial sector remedies
Where it all started: Information Systems and Internet Security Lab (Digital Assembly’s student co-founders are members of this NSF-funded lab run by Professor Memon)