The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hosted Forensics@NIST virtually on Nov. 8–10, 2022.
Over the three days, NIST scientists gave presentations on how they are using advanced methods in metrology, computer science and statistics to strengthen forensic science.
As a NIST Center of Excellence, the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE) presented on Nov. 10, providing an overview of its resources and updates on firearms and toolmarks, bloodstain pattern and handwriting analysis projects.
Alicia Carriquiry, CSAFE director and Distinguished Professor and President’s Chair in Statistics at Iowa State University, started the session with a quick overview of CSAFE before going in-depth on the resources available to the forensic and legal communities.
Next, Maria Cuellar, assistant professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, provided an overview of her work on developing an algorithm for forensic toolmark comparisons.
Tong Zou, a graduate student in statistics at the University of California, Irvine, discussed CSAFE’s work on developing likelihood ratios for bloodstain pattern analysis.
Lastly, Danica Ommen, assistant professor of statistics at Iowa State University, gave an update on CSAFE’s handwriting analysis work.
Watch the conference presentations at https://www.nist.gov/news-events/events/2022/11/forensicsnist-2022. You can find CSAFE’s presentations labeled “Day3.4.mov” in the list of videos.
