Advances in forensics

CORDIScovery – unearthing the hottest topics in EU science, research and innovation

New technologies, existing technologies applied to new challenges, understanding the role of cross-cultural influences in eyewitnesses’ examinations; all ways in which EU projects are helping to make evidence more accessible. This episode of CORDIScovery investigates.

Rape is a global scourge. Millions of unsolved rape cases fail in the absence of evidence found. Current technical barriers to the identification and analysis of sperm traces are one key reason. The Themis project has developed a new technique that can find traces which would be missed by conventional methods and analyses them more quickly and effectively.

What happens when you take green screens, gaming technology, lidar and other cutting-edge imaging techniques and apply them to evidence long buried? The Dig-For-Arch project has developed ways these tools can clarify crime scenes that might currently be hard to interpret.

Our globalised world means cultures are interrelating more than ever – what happens when eyewitnesses give evidence in cross-cultural contexts? How do we unravel information through a cultural filter? The WEIRD WITNESSES project has some interesting findings to share.

This episode of CORDIScovery features three guests who are ideally placed to tell us about the latest advances that are helping to refine criminal investigations. Their projects have all been supported by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme.

Annelies Vredeveldt is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at VU Amsterdam. She investigates psychology in the courtroom, from how eyewitnesses remember crimes to detecting lies in suspects’ statements. Dante Abate is an associate researcher at the Cyprus Institute. His various areas of interest include the application of digital and non-destructive technologies for the identification and documentation of historic crime scenes. Benjamin Corgier is currently the research and development director at AXO Science, a biotech company specialising in molecular biology and innovative technologies for forensics.

For more info on the projects featured, visit: https://europa.eu/!Mrn7k8