A biometric security start-up based out of West Virginia University has secured $1.25 million in angel investment.

The company, called Confirmix, has been developing a new tool that will use facial recognition to unlock users’ mobile devices.

The project started in WVU’s Multispectral Imaging Lab, whose director, Thirimachos Bourlai, assigned a few students the task of creating a prototype for the app, which they completed within its one-week deadline; they called it SecureSelfie.

From there, the project snowballed into the growing business it is now, which is set to open a sales office in the Chicago-metropolitan area.

There have been rising security concerns around mobile phones as they’ve been used more and more commonly to send and access sensitive data, so it’s a timely app.

But it isn’t without competition: Android’s Lollipop operating system already offers a Face Unlock feature that performs essentially the same function.

It isn’t yet clear if Confirmix will be offering its app across multiple platforms, but in any case if it’s going to go up against Lollipop on Android it will likely have a better chance of succeeding by focusing on accuracy and usability, as Face Unlock has had a somewhat bumpy evolution along the way and may still be vulnerable to competition in those areas.