CFS Bulletin
Issue 5 February 2013
w: www.ucl.ac.uk/forensic-sciences
e: jdi-forensic-sciences@ucl.ac.uk
@UCLForensicSci
in this issue:
• QAA publishes Forensic Science Benchmark Statement
• New forensic research by
UCL Computer Science visual recognition of handwriting
• Forensic Horizons and the
Forensic Science Special Interest Group (SIG)
• International forensic science
conferences 2012
• SECReT programme - applications open for 2013
• Research seminar series
• UCL Museums & Public
Engagement - the Galton Collection
• UCL Academy - outreach
through collaboration
• Upcoming events including
the SECReT open evening
QAA Forensic Science
Benchmark statement published
In December 2012 the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) published a subject
benchmark statement for the forensic
sciences. Subject benchmarks statements are a way for the academic
community to describe the nature
and characteristics of programmes
in a subject such as forensic science.
They represent general expectations about the standards for the
award of qualifications at a given
level in terms of the attributes and
capabilities that those possessing
such qualifications should be able to
demonstrate.
The publication provides a helpful
standard for universities to aim for
and achieve. The Director of the JDI
Centre for the Forensic Sciences, Dr
Ruth Morgan, was a member of the
benchmarking group, along with
representatives from other higher
education institutions, providers of
forensic science services, professional
and learned bodies, and training
providers. In his foreword to the
publication, Brian Rankin (Head of
Centre for Forensic Investigation,
Teeside University) says: “This subject benchmark statement is firmly
based in science and therefore has
drawn on other benchmark state-
ments for science subjects, such as
chemistry and biosciences. We have
focused on learning outcomes, rather
than a repetition of content or curricula from other science subjects.
The benchmarking group has worked
hard to capture the unique and
distinctive nature of forensic science,
its setting within the investigative
process as an academic subject, and
its application for a forensic practitioner. The knowledge and transferable skills developed in a forensic science degree course are also valuable
preparation for many other careers.”
You can download the benchmark
statement from the QAA website:
w: http://bit.ly/VgqGqm
Visual recognition systems
in forensic science
A new technique, developed at UCL,
for establishing authorship of pieces
of handwritten text has won the
international Arabic Writer Identification contest for the second year
running [1]. The method, developed
as part of on-going research looking
at how computer vision techniques
can be used in forensic science applications, uses a visual recognition system developed within the Computer
Science department by Dr Andrew
Newell and Dr Lewis Griffin.
Whereas some methods for writer
identification attempt to recognise individual letters or sections
of words, this technique considers
handwriting as a form of texture.
This means that the technique can
easily be applied across different
languages and alphabets without
the need for specific knowledge of
vocabulary.
The same visual recognition system used in the technique has also
recently been applied to another
problem in forensic science, the automatic classification of quartz grains
based upon surface texture, with
very encouraging results [2]. The
researchers now plan further work
in these two areas as well as actively
seeking new applications in forensic
science.
For further details please contact Dr
Andrew Newell
e: a.newell@ucl.ac.uk
[1] Details available at
www.kaggle.com
[2] Newell, A. J., Morgan, R. M.,
Griffin, L. D., Bull, P. A., Marshall,
J. R. and Graham, G. Automated
Texture Recognition of Quartz Sand
Grains for Forensic Applications.
Journal of Forensic Sciences 2012
Dr Andrew Newell
UCL Computer Science
Forensic Science Special
Interest Group: a new
partnership
The Centre, in collaboration with the
newly formed Forensic Science Special Interest Group (SIG), hosted an
event on 23rd January - Conversations in Forensic Science: Pathways
to Partnership.
The Forensic Science SIG is a community for everyone involved in forensic science. Funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to run
a programme of activities aimed at
enabling closer networking between
forensic science users, suppliers,
researchers and policy makers, it was
created as a direct response to the
Silverman Review of research and
development in the forensic sciences
(2011). You can find out more and
join the Forensic Science SIG online
community by visiting the _connect
website.
w: http://bit.ly/15l6LhI
Speakers included CFS steering
group members Professor David
Balding and Dr Lewis Griffin, Dr Gill
Tully (Principle Forensic Services)
and Dr Ali Anjomshoaa (Forensic
Science SIG). Delegates included
practitioners, acdemics from other
HE institutions, and many of our students. A panel session, ably chaired
by David Coleman (CFS External
Advisory Board), generated some interesting discussions on how cutting
edge research from academia can be
validated and made available to those
in the industry.
w: http://bit.ly/wd1o7R
Conferences round-up: 2012
2012 was a busy year for forensic
science conferences, both in the UK
and abroad.
August 2012
In August, Dr Ruth Morgan, Dr
David Lagnado, Professor David
Balding and Dr Itiel Dror*
also attended and presented at the
6th European Academy of Forensic Science Conference, held at The
Hague, in the Netherlands.
*We are pleased to announce that
Itiel Dror is joining the Centre as an
Honorary Senior Research Associate.
Interested in how the brain and
cognitive system perceives and
interprets information, he has a PhD
from Harvard University in cognitive
neuroscience. His work focuses on
the cognitive architecture that underpins expertise, researching expert
performance in the real world and
examining medical surgeons, military fighter pilots, front line police,
and forensic analysts. This research
provides insights into the inherent
trade-offs of being an expert. In the
forensic domain he has demonstrated how contextual information can
influence the judgments and decision
making of experts; he has shown that
even fingerprint and DNA experts
can reach different conclusions
when the same evidence is presented
within different extraneous contexts.
September 2012
Staff and students from the Centre
attended the 21st International
Symposium on the Forensic Sciences
of the Australian and New Zealand
Forensic Science Society (ANZFSS),
held in Hobart, Tasmania in September. Dr Ruth Morgan and a number
of our PhD students gave presentations on their research, which were
all well-received:
James French spoke about his research on the secondary transfer of
gunshot residue (GSR) and his use of
Bayes nets to analyse the results;
Georgia McCulloch presented the
initial findings from her analysis of
organic soil samples and their potential use in forensic provenance;
Nadia Abdul-Karim won a conference award for the best oral presentation for her paper on the retrieval
of chemical explosives residue from
blast scenes. Well done Nadia!
November 2012
In November the Forensic Regulator hosted an important meeting at
the University of Warwick, organised by the Forensic Science Society
(FSSoc). The aim of the Forensic
Horizons: Research & Development
in the Forensic Sciences conference
was to begin a conversation between
academics, practitioners and policy
makers on the future of the forensic
sciences in the UK. The Special Interest Group was launched at this meeting, and it was a chance to network
with others and hear many different
perspectives on the challenges and
opportunities ahead.
A number of staff and students from
the Centre attended the conference,
including some of our new MSc students, who began their studies in October. It was a valuable opportunity
for them to see beyond the classroom
to the reality of the situation facing
forensic science.
The FSSoc also organised a student
conference in December 2012, and
Sally Gamble (one of our MRes students) attended in order to receive an
award for her MSc dissertation.
“I was presented with the Forensic
Science Society Accredited University Student Award for the research
project that I carried out at London South Bank University whilst
completing my part-time MSc in
Forensic Science. The prize included
complimentary FSSoc e-student
membership and a ticket to the FSSoc Student Conference in December 2012.
My research project looked at Matrix
Effects on the Analysis of Illicit
Stimulant Drugs using Liquid Chromatography coupled with Tandem
Mass Spectrometry. This work investigated the difference in quantification results of four illicit stimulant
drugs (cocaine, cathinone, methamphetamine and mephedrone) when
they are analysed in a pure standard
compared to when they are analysed
in a mixture containing some of their
common adulterants often found in
street samples.
The matrix effect is an important
phenomenon to take into consideration when quantification of illicit
drug samples is necessary for evidence in court, since it can have a
significant effect on the outcome of
the analysis. I also applied this to
the quantification of illicit stimulant
drugs present in river water samples,
as well as taking into consideration
the effectiveness of water treatment
plants and human drug metabolism
in order to assess drug usage per
population adjacent to the river water being sampled.”
Sally Gamble
MRes student (SECReT)
The SECReT programme is currently
recruiting for 2013! 11 scholarships
are available from EPSRC, for applicants interested in researching an
aspect of security and/or crime science (including forensic science).
To find out more and to apply, visit
the website: http://bit.ly/sHWhO4
MSc Crime & Forensic Science
Our new cohort of MSc students
have settled in well to their degree
programme, with some of them
having already completed optional
modules in subjects such as Forensic
Archaeology and Molecular Biology. In addition to their timetabled
lectures and seminars, we have run
a weekly forensic science seminar
on a Wednesday afternoon for those
who can attend and many of these
seminars have also been open to any
other students at UCL who have a
particular interest in forensic science.
During the autumn term we were
fortunate enough to have guest
speakers including Professor Peter
Vanezis (Queen Mary, University
of London), Shivani Lamba (Forensic Outreach), Mark Stroud, Peter
Fulham and Stephen Bleay (from
the Centre for Applied Science &
Technology, Home Office), and Dave
Thomas and colleagues (West Mercia
Police). Some of our second and final
year PhD students have presented
their research to the MSc and MRes
students, and the Centre is also
running a forensic science bi-termly
reading group.
For the spring and summer terms we
have another great line-up of guest
speakers who have been kind enough
to agree to visit us and talk about
their work:
• Gemma Angel (UCL)
• Brian Rankin (University of
Teeside)
• Dr Peter Bull (University of
Oxford)
• Professor Colin Aitken (University of Edinburgh)
• James Allman-Talbot (Metropolitan Police Service)
• Ross McEwing (TRACE)
These will be open to the public, so
do check our website for information
on dates and times and see page 6 for
further details.
Research seminars
programme - term 1
UCL Museums - visiting the
Galton Collection
Forensic Outreach
Shivani Lamba, director of Forensic
Outreach, talked to our students
about science communication.
Forensic Outreach was initially
conceived as part of UCL’s Widening
Participation programme in 2002, as
a project bringing forensic science
into school classrooms in the UK.
Over the past 10 years it has evolved
into an online resource for teachers,
students and the public alike. Shivani
encouraged our MSc, MRes and PhD
students to get involved by writing
articles and recording podcasts for
the website.
w: http://forensicoutreach.com/
In December 2012 a group of students from the Centre visited the
Rock Room at UCL for a talk and
demonstration from Subhadra Das,
curator of the Galton Collection for
UCL Museums and Public Engagement.
CAST (Centre for Applied Science
& Technology)
Mark Stroud and Peter Fulham
spoke to our students about the work
that the UK Home Office does in the
field of crime and forensic science,
and how this feeds into the work of
the police and other forensic practitioners. As a result of this seminar,
some of our students are conducting
research for their MSc/MRes dissertations with the support of CAST.
Professor Peter Vanezis
Professor Vanezis - a highly respected pathologist and professor of
forensic medicine - gave a fascinating
talk on research into the phenomenon of bruising, and how this is
used by forensic nurses and doctors,
as well as by forensic pathologists.
He runs the MSc in Forensic Medical
Sciences at Queen Mary, University
of London.
They went to find out more about
Francis Galton, who gave his name
to the UCL Galton Laboratory as
well as this museum collection. A
Victorian polymath and cousin to
Charles Darwin, Francis Galton is
principally known for his pioneering work in the field of statistics, and
also for being the ‘father of eugenics’.
Less well-known perhaps is his work
on the early use of fingerprints as
a means of identifying individuals.
While he did not invent the technique, he was certainly responsible
for popularising it.
Subhadra presented various objects
from the collection held at UCL,
including sets of fingerprints like the
ones in the image above. The use of
fingerprint evidence is so ubiquitous in forensic science now that it
is fascinating to see this early work.
Galton was obsessed with measuring things, and classifying people
according to type. He was a strong
believer in (genetic) inheritance,
although in his day scientists were
unaware that genes were the mechanism of inherited characteristics
like hair and eye colour. We saw a
collection of hair samples of different colours, and of glass eyes, which
gazed out unblinkingly (and unnervingly) at us.
Another aspect of Galton’s work that
has relevance to crime and forensic
science is the use of photography to
document criminals.
This technique was pioneered in
Paris by a police clerk named Alphonse Bertillon, who took photographs (‘mugshots’ like the one
above in UCL’s Galton Collection of
Bertillon himself) of criminals and
various physical mearsurements in
order to build up a physical profile
for identification.
Galton took this idea beyond the
profiling of criminals for identification purposes and had ambitions to
classify and categorise the whole of
humanity. To this end, on his death
he bequeathed the (then enormous)
sum of £45,000 to UCL for the foundation of the National Laboratory for
Eugenics. Later it was renamed the
Galton Laboratory, and became part
of the Biology Department in 1996.
UCL Museums and Collections are
planning to put images of many of
the fascinating objects in their stores
online, and some (like the ones
shown in this article) are already
available on Moodle. If you are
interested, have a look and give them
some feedback:
w: http://bit.ly/YJnn0q
UCL Academy - outreach &
engagement with schools
In December 2012 the Centre was
contacted by Lorraine Stolarczyk,
Curriculum Leader for Physics at
UCL Academy. Lorraine asked for
input into the science curriculum
she was designing for Year 7 (11
year olds), which had a forensic science theme. UCL Academy is a new
school in Camden, sponsored by
UCL. At the moment there are 180
Y7 students and 125 Y12 (6th form)
students, and they will reach full capacity by 2016. As an academy, they
are independent of the Local Authority and will benefit from the support
of UCL - including master classes,
seminars and summer schools.
A group from CFS went into the
school in early January to run a
couple of activities to help introduce
the pupils to forensic science as a discipline. Nadia Abdul-Karim, David
Pugh and Kirstie Hampson went in
to talk to the students during the first
week of term. We gave a brief introductory talk to 90 students, and answered some of their questions about
what forensic scientists do (there
were several questions about dead
bodies!). Nadia then set up a mock
‘crime scene’ using everyday things a handbag, a bottle with some liquid
in it, a crumpled up piece of paper and invited groups of pupils to come
in and say what they thought might
have happened, and what they would
do if they were crime scene investigators.
SuperLab!
“2053 AD. Humankind has harnessed the super abilities of comic
books and science fiction. And now
the battle between good and evil
continues at a heightened pace.
Some unusual scenarios were suggested by some of the pupils (not
to mention a fair bit of contamination when they walked all over the
scene!) but they also knew more than
they realised about how evidence
is important to forensic scientists.
Afterwards they discussed together
as a large group how a real crime
scene investigator would have processed the scene - looking at some
real scene markers, and photos of the
protective clothing worn by professional investigators.
We are delighted that were was good
feedback from the teachers and the
pupils, who loved the session. We
look forward to working with UCL
Academy again in the future and
hope to build a partnership with
them on the foundations of these
initial visits. One idea is to run a
mock trial later in the year with some
of our PhD students taking part as
expert witnesses to show pupils how
the world of the courtroom relates to
the science they are studying in the
classroom.
If you are interested in getting
involved please get in touch with
Kirstie Hampson
e: k.hampson@ucl.ac.uk
Scientists have enhanced crime
fighters’ human senses. The latest
techniques and technology are applied to track down criminals. But
these extraordinary abilities can be
dangerous in the wrong hands. Evil
has fought back. Reading minds and
controlling people’s thoughts are possible to the skilled few.
Roll back 40 years to 2013. How
close are we to attaining these abilities? Probably closer than you think.”
A group of PhD students, postdocs
and artists - including Nadia AbdulKarim, Georgia McCulloch, Dagmar
Heinrich and Helen Earwaker from
the CFS - are involved in this outreach project. They mixed science
and art to explore the techniques
artists use, how science and art
influence each other, and whether
the super abilities conjured up from
comic books and science fiction can
soon become a reality.
They ran two events during February
(20th & 27th) at the Bedroom Bar in
Shoreditch, London and both were
hugely successful sell-out occasions.
See their website for details:
w: http://superlab.org.uk/index.html
You can also follow them on Twitter:
@SuperLAB13
Stay in touch
Recent events
Conversations in Forensic Science:
Pathways to Partnership
23rd January 2013
UCL
We jointly hosted an event with the
Forensic Science Special Interest
Group, which brought together forensic science stakeholders, practitioners, service managers, trainers,
industry providers and academics
to discuss how to improve partnership working. The programme and
presentation slides can be viewed on
our website.
w: http://bit.ly/wd1o7R
Upcoming events
SECReT Open Evening
12th March 2013
UCL
The Security Science Doctoral Research Training Centre (SECReT) is
holding an open evening in March
for prospective PhD students. 11
scholarships from EPSRC are available to successful applicants, including fees and a full stipend. Students
undertake an MRes in their first year
before upgrading to a 3-year PhD.
For further information, see the
events page on the department
website.
w: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/scs/events
CFS Research Seminar
The courtroom - where justice is
played out?
6th March 2013, 4pm*
UCL
We will be welcoming Dr Peter Bull,
University of Oxford, to the Centre
in March to talk about his work as an
expert witness.
CFS Research Seminar
Statistical aspects of forensic evidence
13th March 2013, 4pm*
UCL
Professor Colin Aitken is visiting the
Centre to talk about how forensic
evidence can be interpreted using
statistical methods.
To keep up-to-date with news
from the CFS, events we are running and external news in the
forensic science field, why not
visit our website and follow our
newsfeed on Twitter?
w: www.ucl.ac.uk/forensic-sciences
@UCLForensicSci
e: jdi-forensic-sciences@ucl.ac.uk
Forensics Europe Expo
24th-25th April 2013
Olympia, London
The inaugural Forensics Europe
Expo will take place in April 2013. It
is sponsored by LGC Forensics and
organised in collaboration with The
Forensic Science Society. Information on exhibitors and seminars can
be found on their website.
w: http://bit.ly/Yejxe3
CFS Research Seminar
Wildlife Forensics
8th May 2013, 4pm*
UCL
Ross McEwing from TRACE UK will
talk to us in May about the field of
wildlife forensics and the challenge
of combatting wildlife crime.
*Places at these seminars are limited,
so if you would like to attend, please
email us for details.
CFS Bulletin
February 2013
Editor: Kirstie Hampson
Contributors:
Andrew Newell
Sally Gamble
Next issue
May 2013