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Natural Traces in forensic investigations - how the analysis of non-human evidence can solve crime

Projektbeschreibung

Eine Lücke in der praktischen Forensikausbildung schließen

In der Welt der Forensik hat jeder Tatort eine eigene Geschichte parat, meist geschrieben von winzigen nicht-menschlichen biologischen Spuren. Tierhaare, Pollen, Bodenorganismen und Umwelt-DNA sind nur einige Beispiele dieser schwer fassbaren Hinweise. Doch in der EU mangelt es auf Ebene der Postgraduierten an der Kompetenz, diese natürlichen Spuren wirksam zu analysieren und auszuwerten. Im Projekt Natural Traces wird diese Lücke in der Forensikausbildung mit Unterstützung durch die Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Maßnahmen angegangen. Über das Projekt erhalten 10 Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden eine umfassende Ausbildung zu praktischer Forensik. Die Schulung erfolgt über akademische und nicht-akademische Partner, Polizeiakademien und Labors. Der Schwerpunkt liegt darauf, biologische Nachweise in eine Bayessche Inferenz zu integrieren.

Ziel

Literally any crime scene contains animal, plant, soil, microbial or environmental traces. Examples include pet hairs or saliva, pollen and algae, soil and soil organisms like bacteria or nematodes, fungal spores, insects, and environmental traces in the form of environmental DNA of any origin. Such biological traces can be found mainly on living people (suspects, victims), on objects like cars or weapons, and on bodies not just on the surface but also in their surroundings like single or mass graves, or an aquatic environment.
In the EU, there is a lack of training opportunities in applied topics of forensic science at postgraduate level, such as the qualitative and quantitative analysis of specifically such non-human biological traces. While many EU countries have forensic laboratories that also such traces, a much broader, integrated knowledge base is needed, built on close cooperation between basic research in academia and analysis and application in casework by forensic specialists. Natural Traces aims to optimise the procedures for taking and analysing non-human traces in order to meet the ever-increasing demands for identifying suspects and victims and to link traces to different places, times or courses of action. The results based on this need a statistical robustness that will also hold up in the courtroom under cross-examination.
The proposal aims for 10 PhD students with a background in life sciences. They will build their knowledge and experience in practical forensics in training schools provided by academic, non-academic partners, and police academies or laboratories. The training embeds biological evidence in a Bayesian framework, making it universally comparable with all other forms of evidence, by applying novel probabilistic approaches to extract forensic useful information from metadata. It is truly cross-sectoral, with secondments at end-users of the training (e.g. police forces) and joint supervision by PIs from different countries.

Koordinator

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE-UNIVERSITAET FRANKFURT AM MAIN
Netto-EU-Beitrag
€ 260 539,20
Adresse
THEODOR W ADORNO PLATZ 1
60323 Frankfurt Am Main
Deutschland

Auf der Karte ansehen

Region
Hessen Darmstadt Frankfurt am Main, Kreisfreie Stadt
Aktivitätstyp
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Gesamtkosten
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Beteiligte (9)

Partner (14)