February 2014

February is always a nice month, with the conference of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle as one of the main event. With over 3400 participants it was an excellent event. This time I had two presentations in the scientific session, one on camera identification on social networks and one on forensic hand comparison together with my colleagues. Two workshops that I moderated and also two presentations in the workshops on 3D-methods and biometric facial systems.

My colleagues presented on evaluation of errors in DNA analysis. It was interesting to see that human errors in DNA reporting and handling of the evidence contribute to most of the known errors. They also compared it to other labs, however of forensic labs not many publications on this are available yet. Also with many checks in the system, still reporting is one of the important sources of error, so it is always good to keep this in mind and improve the system.

As Trustee of the Forensic Science Foundation, I see that more attention is given to international participants, all of them are open to international participants and there is even the new Henry Lee scholarship especially designed for international participants.

Also forensic cloud computing had many papers this time, and this is certainly good since it requires another methodology for digital evidence.

On 10 February the European Commission a meeting at the European Commission on EC3, https://www.europol.europa.eu/ec3‎ the European cybercrime center. Also an event for networking for the ENFSI Forensic IT Working group. It was good to see much interest in the topic here.