Advance Your Research Skills
CSAFE, a NIST Center of Excellence, values talented young scientists interested in partnering with us to improve the United States criminal justice system. Our team is increasing the scientific foundations of pattern and digital evidence through innovative research and training opportunities. Alongside contributing to the fair administration of justice, our dynamic community is passionate about mentoring the next generation of leading researchers.
With CSAFE, students gain valuable professional experience and prepare for a career in the criminal justice, forensic science, judicial and related fields. We invite students committed to innovation and excellence to inquire about our available opportunities.
The Ultimate Platform for Statistical & Forensic Education
CSAFE Learning is a hub for students exploring the application of statistics in forensic science. From quick videos to in-depth courses, the platform is full of cutting-edge research and real-world examples that can take your statistical knowledge to the next level.
OSAC STG Student Membership
The OSAC Statistics Task Group (STG) is looking for Student Affiliate Members.
As a member, graduate students will have the opportunity to work with leading forensic statisticians and learn how statistics can help forensic scientists in their daily casework.
Interested in participating? Click the button for more information.
Student Research Opportunities
CSAFE REU AT IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
REU, or Research Experience for Undergraduates, is CSAFE’s ten-week, immersive summer internship program where students discover how statistical and computational concepts apply to CSAFE’s key research areas in pattern or digital evidence. REU students work toward achieving CSAFE’s core mission of building a statistically sound and scientifically solid foundation for the analysis and interpretation of forensic evidence.
NIST SUMMER UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (SURF)
CSAFE partner, NIST, operates A summer program called SURF. The SURF program is designed to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM through a unique research experience that supports the NIST mission. For 11 weeks, SURF students contribute to the ongoing research of one of the six NIST facilities. Students work under the mentorship of a NIST scientist or engineer.
DATA SCIENCE FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD YOUNG SCHOLARS PROGRAM
The Data Science for the Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars program is an immersive summer program that engages students from across Iowa to work together on projects that address local and state government challenges around critical social issues relevant in the world today. DSPG resident scholars conduct research at the intersection of statistics, computation and the social sciences to determine how information generated within every community can be leveraged to improve quality of life and inform public policy.
RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES AT CSAFE
CSAFE undergraduate research positions will advance your problem solving, professional communication and research skills. You will work alongside our team of statisticians, scientists, post-doctoral scholars and graduate students on complex and challenging projects in areas such as firearms, handwriting, bloodspatter and shoeprint analysis. These academic initiatives provide future forensic science professionals with hands-on opportunities to learn about the roles statistics and computational analysis play in both research and the field.
Available Resources
For Students
Found 229 Results
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A Study in Reproducibility: The Congruent Matching Cells Algorithm and cmcR Package
Type: Publication Research Area(s): Firearms and Toolmarks
Published: 2023 | By: Joseph Zemmels
Scientific research is driven by our ability to use methods, procedures, and materials from previous studies and further research by adding to it. As the need for computationally-intensive methods to analyze large amounts of data grows, the criteria needed to…
Forensic Science in Legal Education
Type: Publication Research Area(s): Training and Education
Published: 2021 | By: brandon Garrett
In criminal cases, forensic science reports and expert testimony play an increasingly important role in adjudication. More states now follow a federal reliability standard, following Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals and Rule 702, which call upon judges to assess the…
The Contribution of Forensic and Expert Evidence to DNA Exoneration Cases: An Interim Report
Type: Publication,Reports Research Area(s): DNA,Forensic Statistics,Implementation and Practice
Published: 2023 | By: Simon Cole
This report is from Simon A. Cole, Vanessa Meterko, Sarah Chu, Glinda Cooper, Jessica Weinstock Paredes, Maurice Possley, and Ken Otterbourg (2022), The Contribution of Forensic and Expert Evidence to DNA Exoneration Cases: An Interim Report (National Registry of Exonerations…
How Minutiae Frequency is Perceived and Used by Fingerprint Analysts in the Evaluation of Fingerprint Evidence
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Latent Print
Published: 2023 | By: Adele Quigley-McBride
Analysts consider the appearance, placement, and number of features within a fingerprint pattern (called minutiae) that correspond when deciding whether two fingerprints originated from the same person. Little is known about the actual base rates for different minutiae. That said,…
Likelihood ratios for categorical count data with applications in digital forensics
Type: Publication Research Area(s): Digital,Forensic Statistics
Published: 2022 | By: Rachel Longjohn
We consider the forensic context in which the goal is to assess whether two sets of observed data came from the same source or from different sources. In particular, we focus on the situation in which the evidence consists of…
Reliability for Binary and Ordinal Data in Forensics
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics
Published: 2022 | By: Hina Arora
Black-box studies are a crucial part of assessing the accuracy and reliability of subjective decisions in forensics. The extant black-box studies have generally had two components. In the first study, examiners are asked to assess forensic samples (typically questioned and…
Uncertainty in probabilistic genotyping of low template DNA: A case study comparing STRMix™ and TrueAllele™
Type: Publication Research Area(s): DNA,Forensic Statistics
Published: 2023 | By: William Thompson
Two probabilistic genotyping (PG) programs, STRMix™ and TrueAllele™, were used to assess the strength of the same item of DNA evidence in a federal criminal case, with strikingly different results. For STRMix, the reported likelihood ratio in favor of the…
Understanding forensic decision-making with Item Response Theory: Using a NFI firearms study
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Implementation and Practice
Published: 2022 | By: Amanda Luby
This presentation is from the Forensic Big Data Colloquium at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, November 2022. Posted with permission of CSAFE.
Source identification of shoeprints in mock crime scene using an algorithm based on automatic alignment
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Footwear,Forensic Statistics
Published: 2023 | By: Hana Lee
This presentation is from the 75th Anniversary Conference of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Orlando, Florida, February 13-18, 2023. Posted with permission of CSAFE
Ensemble of Score Likelihood Ratios under the common source problem
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics
Published: 2023 | By: Frederico Veneri
Machine learning-based Score Likelihood Ratios have been proposed as an alternative to traditional Likelihood Ratios and Bayes Factor to quantify the value of evidence when contrasting two opposing propositions. Under the common source problem, the opposing proposition relates to the…
Forensic Analysis on Android Social Networking Applications
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Digital
Published: 2023 | By: Chen Shi
This presentation is from the 75th Anniversary Conference of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, Orlando, Florida, February 13-18, 2023. Posted with permission of CSAFE.
Source Camera Identification on Multi-Camera Phones
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Digital,Forensic Statistics
Published: 2023 | By: Stephanie Reinders
Camera identification addresses the scenario where an investigator has a questioned digital image from an unknown camera. The investigator wants to know whether the questioned image was taken by a camera on a person of interest’s phone. Researchers discovered that…
Twin Convolutional Neural Networks to Classify Writers Using Handwriting Data
Type: Poster Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Handwriting
Published: 2023 | By: Pilhyun (Andrew) Lim
Identifying the source of handwriting is an important application in the field of forensic science that addresses questioned document evidence found in criminal cases and civil litigation. It is difficult, given the idiosyncrasies of a person’s handwriting, to recognize the…
Quantifying Bayes Factors for Forensic Handwriting Evidence
Type: Poster Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Handwriting
Published: 2023 | By: Anyesha Ray
Questioned Document Examiners (QDEs) are tasked with analyzing handwriting evidence to make source (or writership) determinations. The Center for Statistics and Applications of Forensic Evidence (CSAFE) has previously developed computational methods to automatically extract quantifiable handwriting features and statistical methods…
Quantifying Writer Variance Through Rainbow Triangle Graph Decomposition of the Common Word “the”
Type: Poster Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Handwriting
Published: 2023 | By: Alexandria Arabio
Handwriting comparative analysis is based on the principle that no two individuals can produce the same writing and that an individual cannot exactly reproduce his/her handwriting. This project aims to assess and quantify the natural variations produced by a distinct…
A Likelihood Ratio Approach for Detecting Behavioral Changes in Device Usage Over Time
Type: Poster Research Area(s): Digital
Published: 2023 | By: Rachel Longjohn
This work focuses on the situation in which investigators have obtained as evidence logs of user-generated activities on a device, such as sending text messages or emails, opening or interacting with mobile apps, or making calls from particular locations. Quantitative…
An Ounce of Prevention: A Simple and Practical Tool for Mitigating Cognitive Bias in Forensic Decisions.
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Implementation and Practice
Published: 2023 | By: Adele Quigley-McBride
Learning Overview: The free information management toolkit described in this presentation will be introduced and attendees will learn to use this toolkit as a training tool and as a practical solution for analysts and laboratories interested in implementing the Linear…
Sampling & Non-Response: Implications for inference in black-box studies
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Implementation and Practice
Published: 2023 | By: Kori Khan
The following is from University of California Law San Francisco symposium "Forensic identification in criminal courts," February 2023. Posted with permission of CSAFE.
Analyzing spatial responses: A comparison of IRT- based approaches
Type: Publication Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Latent Print
Published: 2023 | By: Amanda Luby
We investigate two approaches for analyzing spatial coordinate responses using models inspired by Item Response Theory (IRT). In the first, we use a two-stage approach to first construct a pseudoresponse matrix using the spatial information and then apply standard IRT…
The Future of Pattern Recognition in Forensic Science
Type: Presentation Slides Research Area(s): Forensic Statistics,Implementation and Practice
Published: 2023 | By: Alicia Carriquiry
This presentation is from World Police Summit 2023, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 7-9, 2023. Posted with permission of CSAFE.
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