
Posted August 10, 2026
The Scientific Committee for the 12th International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics is pleased to announce the keynote speakers for ICFIS 2026.
ICFIS 2026 will bring together researchers, statisticians, and legal professionals to share their work at the intersection of law and mathematical sciences. This year, four renowned speakers will headline the conference: Peter Vergeer, Ashley Hall, Ray Wickenheiser, and Alicia Carriquiry. They will share insights from their diverse backgrounds in statistics, data science, machine learning, and forensic science.
ICFIS 2026 will take place online from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2. Registration details are available on the ICFIS 2026 website.

About the Keynote Speakers
Peter Vergeer
Peter Vergeer is a data scientist and forensic statistician at the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI). His research interests go from the theoretical foundation of statistical and machine learning models used in forensic science to introducing new methodology, improving the performance of existing models, and application in casework. Currently, he is working for the data science team of the chemical and physical traces department at the NFI, whose aim is to provide web-based, specialized machine-learning and data science tools to improve the efficiency and quality of domain-specific research and evaluation methods in casework.

Vergeer’s keynote address is titled “The Moonshot: Towards Instantly Well-Calibrated Feature-based Specific-source Bayes Factors.”
Ashley Hall
Ashley Hall is the director of the Forensic Science Graduate Program at the University of California, Davis. She holds an M.S. in forensic biochemistry and a Ph.D. in biomolecular science, with over 20 years of experience in forensic science, both in the defense industry and academia. Hall has an active research lab that focuses on the use of touch and trace-level DNA in activity-level evaluations and the development of a DNA profile database, FauxDIS, for use in educational and research endeavors.

Ray Wickenheiser
Ray Wickenheiser is the head of the Acadiana Criminalistics Laboratory Cold Case Initiative, principal of Ray Wickenheiser Forensic Consulting, and the retired director of the New York State Police Crime Laboratory System. Wickenheiser has over 41 years of forensic science experience, including 23 years as a crime lab director in local and state crime laboratories. His areas of expertise include crime lab administration, quality management, forensic DNA, serology, hair and fiber trace evidence, physical matching and comparison, glass fracture analysis, forensic grain comparison, crime scene, conflict resolution, and forensic investigative genetic genealogy (FIGG).
Hall and Wickenheiser will jointly present “Activity Level Evaluation: Data for Casework Scenarios and Trace DNA Transfer Theories.”

Alicia Carriquiry
Alicia Carriquiry is a distinguished professor of liberal arts and sciences and serves as the President’s Chair in Statistics at Iowa State University and is the director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE). Her research interests include Bayesian methods, sampling, study design, and the application of machine learning approaches in biological and forensic problems.
Carriquiry’s presentation is “From Black Box to Glass Box: Interpretability, Validation and Benchmarking of AI Methods in Forensic Evidence Evaluation.”

Julia Mortera
Julia Mortera is an Honorary Professor in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol and a retired professor of statistics at the Università Roma Tre. Her research interests are in forensic statistics, particularly Bayesian networks for analyzing forensic evidence, including identification from DNA mixtures, models for kinship analysis, and statistical analysis in investigations of suspected medical misconduct. The title of Mortera’s keynote presentation is “How Prediction and Accommodation Affect Strength of Support for Scientific Theories and Criminal Prosecutions.”
To view the keynote presentation summaries, visit the ICFIS 2026 website.
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