Twins Test FBI’s Biometrics How studying twins helps the Bureau evaluate and improve AI biometric systems A twin takes part in biometrics screening during the 2026 Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. Every August, thousands of siblings gather in Twinsburg, Ohio, for the annual Twins Days Festival. While the event is primarily a social celebration of multiples from around the world, it also serves as the setting for one of the FBI's most distinctive scientific research efforts. For more than 15 years, a partnership between the Bureau and West Virginia University (WVU) has utilized this gathering to evaluate and improve biometric technologies. Tucked away from the main festivities is an area known to regulars as "Research Row," where white tents stand alongside food trucks and souvenir stands. Here, researchers from a variety of industries invite festival-goers to step out of the summer heat and participate in various studies. The FBI and WVU are a staple there—hosting hundreds of individuals who volunteer to take part in a study designed to answer one of biometric science's most pressing questions: How do you accurately distinguish between two people who look almost exactly alike? The resulting dataset—one of the few of its kind in the world—helps researchers evaluate fingerprint, iris, and facial recognition technologies, improving their accuracy while deepening the understanding of their limitations. The ultimate biometric challenge “From a biometrics perspective, identical twins are the ultimate challenge because we are trying to uniquely identify one person from another,” said Ben Smith, a biometric program manager in the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. “When it comes to facial recognition, the identical twins scenario is probably the most difficult challenge because they can look practically the same.” That difficulty is precisely what makes twins so valuable to science. Although identical twins often share remarkably