June 2007

Before the summer vacation many things should be finished. This time we did a court training (defending an expert report) before an audience, and it appeared to be good. Some sharp questions were asked, and it always helps to improve the quality. A new student are starting their projects now (camera identification), and several students are finishing their projects (software development, literature overview of vein scanners and their reliability).

May 2007 (2)

We had many holidays this month, however also time to finish some casework. Even a presentation in Brussels last week on biometrics was nice to give http://www.intertechusa.com/conferences/conferenceDetail.aspx?displayDetail=overview&WCID=198 . I was the last speaker of the conference, and still there were many nice questions to answer. The whole range from DNA databases and exchange of information on these to the spoofing of fingerprints, irises and the current implementation of the biometric devices were discussed.

May 2007

April was a nice month. It is always good to go with colleagues to have a drink, and discuss new developments and of course much more as can be seen in the photograph. This month I had to do several cases, and do some investigation with a reconstruction at an ATM, to have good images for comparison of faces. It is difficult to have a similar positioning and the same condition, so each time we are improving this method. Since many wireless options exist, we can use them to make more efficient.

The steering committee of ENFSI was this year in Belfast. It was a nice event, and I enjoyed the city also a lot. The city improves each time that I am there (and also gets more expensive;) We discussed the meeting in Dublin, and had some nice ideas, and of course discussed proficiency tests. More information on the working group is available on www.enfsi.org .

And on the 30th of april (Queens day in the Netherlands) I will give a presentation for FIDIS on biometric devices in forensic science in Parague, and a kind of overview how biometrics is used in forensic science. It is always good to have some time, to update these presentations.

The website is also updated in some form. I also see that the forens-l list http://geradts.com/mailman/listinfo/forens_geradts.com which is hosted there runs again.

Last week I planned several meetings for our R&D-projects, in order to have an update. The software for analysis and repair of AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and 3GP streams that has been developed in the lab, will be open sourced on sourceforge in June. If possible, we try to open source it, so others can also implement their plugins and of course anyone can review the software.

Colleagues

April 2007

Amsterdam central station

I am just using my new phone K800i where I have UMTS and can directly post on this blog and made a photograph out from the window of our appartement in Amsterdam. It seems to be convenient, however for me it was also important that the phone has a radio on it. Today I had a phone conference with this new phone, and tested VOIP over UMTS. It did work, however it appeared that I had some latency issues.

As always enjoying new things. Yesterday some casework and a reconstruction at night, since we had to have similar conditions. This week it was somewhat more quiet due to Eastern, so a good time to think on old projects that should have been finished, and look how to have some new projects and possibilities.

March 2007

The AAFS www.aafs.org was a very interesting conference in which progress has been made to form a digital evidence and multimedia section. After this conference I didn't have much time, due to backlogs. We had to write new and modified project proposals, do casework, give advise, and had several visitors.

Furthermore I went to Damascus for one week. It was a nice and relaxed vacation. We rented a car and visited many nice sites and visited very good restaurants. Our hotel was in the mountains around Damascus, and it was a good time to relax.

Currently I am sitting at the FIDIS www.fidis.net general meeting. Many interesting talks on identity related issues. As leader of WP 6, it appears we had some trouble with delivering the deliverable on time. The issue is that it was difficult to find a forensic profiler with the necessary clearance on time. Suddenly we are working on a solution by cooperating with the University of Lausanne, and I have a good feeling that this deliverable will be finished in 2006. The nice part of FIDIS is that it is more multi-disciplinary, so I get more insights in different perspectives.

February 2007

I am looking forward to the AAFS meeting in San Antonio this month. This time, I organize a workshop, give two papers, and even receive an award. I like the good atmosphere of the AAFS, the interesting people to meet, and some good discussions about forensic science. It is 8 hours flying at least, so I will stay one day longer to get used to the time difference.

Currently I am preparing the presentations. However it appears that this time my planning and scheduling is better than before. I got it ready last week, and everything was in time. Also my casework has been in time. We are also doing software project with students, and I am looking what will happen with these. Also as chairperson of the employees representatives, I had several meeting, and since our director will change, we have some interesting times. Also the organization is expanding now, so it looks very optimistic.