October 2007

This month I started with the FIDIS workshop which appeared to be succesful. Also new ideas for new deliverables, however it is always a question of time if this will succeed. Before I went on vacation I had to finish several cases and write reports since it is important to deliver in the requested time for the trials. So before vacation it is as always busy, finishing some tasks.

Currently three students are working on improving our face comparison tool which is available from www.sourceforge.net face2face and NFI comparator. I am testing the results right now. Furthermore the research on pixel artefacts or Photo Response Non Uniformity of CMOS and CCD sensors appears to have better results then expected.

The vacation is to Turkey and Greece, and it is really nice. We went to İzmır, Van and to Chios and Lesvos. Van was not as touristic anymore, however the lake is beautiful.

September 2007

September is a busy month as always. This month I am looking forward to the ENFSI www.enfsi.eu Forensic IT working group meeting in Dublin, where I am the chairman of. We just migrated our information to the new website www.enfsimembers.eu . It is always more work then expected, and of course one needs to get used to new user interfaces.

On the 1st October we will organize an event on forensic profiling for www.fidis.net . This was expected for a long time, however now it will work out, since now we have many contributors ranging from the University of Lausanne, to the London School of Economics, University of Leuven and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. Forensic profiling as such is a broad topic. However it means for us finding links between evidence by means of searching and linking databases of information. The different aspects from technological to privacy aspects will be handled in this deliverable.

The R&D projects are currently working out well also with a student. On pixel artefacts in cameras we did some new research with a database of cameras. It is nice to see the results, and I hope some if this will be presented at the AAFS in Washington DC.

The projects that I work on for forensic face comparison (comparator and face2face), and defraser for analysis of formats and codecs are now available on www.sourceforge.net . A group of students will work on the software to merge these projects.

Also busy with casework, and for October we have an internal audit where I have to defend eight reports for a committee. This procedure is a kind of internal certification, however it also means work in preparation.

August 2007

August is a month that many colleagues are on vacation. It is a good month to do some planning, an making new ideas. At the lab, there are some fewer cases, and in some way it is also good to finish reports, and making a good start for the next months to come when it is busy.

Preparing meetings for FIDIS www.fidis.net on forensic profiling, ENFSI www.enfsi.org Forensic IT working group.

Also with MRI scans I wrote on before and the interpretation of them, it appears that different radiologist make different conclusions. It is interesting to see that there is no golden standard on these things yet.

July 2007

At the beginning of this month I was the whole week in Brussels for the European Commission. It is always nice to be in Brussels. This week we also have to finish some casework. For a reconstruction at night we have to be late at a place where a crime had happened to have the proper lighting and do a proper reconstruction.

I will have surgery to my wrist later on this week (caused by the catheterisation through my wrist in the hospital which probably damaged the vein and one of the nerves and caused that I have a bumb on it and difficulties with using my hand), so for two weeks I am not able to write that much. It is summer time, so it is time to read, make new proposals, evaluate and finishing the casework. So I also have to be quick for the proposals for the AAFS meeting, since they have to be in before August 1st 2007.

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.