Iowa State’s Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, or CSAFE, was recently honored by the American Statistical Association.

 

They received the SPAIG, the Statistical Partnerships among Academe, Industry, and Government Award on July 29. The award recognizes partnerships between universities, industry, and government to promote the use of statistics in real life.

 

“For us it’s very important, because that’s our mission,” Alicia Carriquiry, CSAFE director and distinguished professor of statistics, said. “Our mission is to promote the principle use of statistics in forensics, and so this pretty much says you guys are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing.”

 

The award acknowledges CSAFE’s cooperative agreement with NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

 

CSAFE is funded by NIST and are going into their fourth year of a five year cooperative agreement.

 

“The cooperative agreement means that we try to compliment and collaborate on the research we carry out,” Carriquiry said.

 

Their collaboration with the institution allows them resources and ways to connect with their community they may not have access to on their own.

 

“A lot of our techniques need advanced technology…and a lot of crime labs don’t have access to these kind of advanced methods,” Heikie Hoffman, professor of statistics at Iowa State said.

 

Carriquiry and Hoffman were both mentioned as key contributors from the association.

 

CSAFE was established in 2015 as a way to apply more objective science in the forensics field when dealing with human evidence.

 

There was a need to understand how reliable, objective, scientific, and valid techniques in the field were, as well as how they were being applied.

 

“It was decided there was a need for more science in forensics science,” Carriquiry said.

 

CSAFE is a consortium of four universities, with Iowa State being the lead. The other three are the University of California Irvine, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

 

Hoffmann is working with bullet comparisons and error rates. She is working on putting numbers behind comparisons to see the role of statistics in seeing when bullets can be recognized being shot from the same firearm.

 

They have a good collaboration with Story County sheriff’s office, who are helping with a large scale study to track firearms over time, Hoffman said.

 

“Never in a million years did I think that going to a shooting range would be part of my job description at some point,” Hoffmann said.

 

Not only do the staticians work with bullets, but they work with shoes, catridge cases, fingerprints, handwriting, digital research, and human factors. They also work on best ways to present evidence to jurors in the most objective way.

 

The center has student involvement as well, with students from undergraduates to post-docs helping out and doing research. Over the summer, the center even had a few high school students involved.

 

Looking forward, the center hopes to continue their work with NIST in the future. A lot of their research projects are long term, Carriquiry said.