‘CSI grant’ for Bart Verheij

Evidence in court cases based on statistics can easily lead to mistakes. The case of Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse who in 2003 was sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of crimes which, as it turned out last year, she did not commit, is a well-known example of this. In order to prevent such mistakes from happening in future, Dr Bart Verheij (Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen) has set up a research project aiming to improve the dovetailing between statistical techniques and legal practice. Last week the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded him a Forensic Science Grant of almost half a million euros for this project.

Forensic statistics is a new, rapidly growing branch within the field of probability and statistics, applied to criminal law. In his research project ‘Designing and Understanding Forensic Bayesian Networks with Arguments and Scenarios’, Bart Verheij will link the successful statistical modelling technique of Bayesian networks to models of argumentation and scenario construction associated with the legal way of thinking. Researchers of the University of Groningen and Utrecht University will collaborate with legal professionals in the project.

NWO incentive for forensic research

The Forensic Science NWO programme has made EUR 3.5 million available to nine research teams that will focus on forensic research. This is the first broad, multidisciplinary research programme in the field of Forensic Science in the Netherlands. Studies will be conducted, for example, into face recognition and how to find perpetrators by means of their family members’ DNA. This may bring the well-known research methods from TV series such as CSI a step closer to reality.

More information:

Bart Verheij , tel. 003150 - 363 63 96
Webpages about this project