Statistics Department Seminar Series: Alicia Carriquiry, Distinguished Professor, Department of Statistics, Director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, Iowa State University

Abstract: Evidence recovered from the scene of a crime may include images of finger, tire tread or footwear prints, of the striations on the surface of a bullet, or of a handwritten note. A common forensic question is whether the suspect might be the source of that evidence. To answer this question, forensic examiners carry out a visual comparison of the images obtained from the crime scene – the questioned items – and from a putative source such as the suspect’s shoe or a sample of the suspect’s handwriting. The latter are known as the reference or known items.

We propose more objective approaches to extract features from patterns that permit quantifying the similarity between a pair of images. Depending on the type of evidence and on other crime-specific situations, the strength of the evidence in favor of the same source hypothesis set forth by the prosecution can be estimated using a statistical modeling framework or an algorithmic framework. In this presentation, we use two examples -- forensic analysis of handwriting and firearms examination -- to describe and illustrate both frameworks.


Alicia Carriquiry is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Statistics at Iowa State University. She researches applications of statistics in human nutrition, bioinformatics, forensic sciences and traffic safety, and has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in corresponding academic journals. She received an MSc in animal sci­ence from the University of Illinois, and an MSc and a PhD in statistics and animal genetics from Iowa State University.

Dr. Carriquiry is the lead investigator for the CSAFE program, providing scientific oversight and research expertise. Along with Dr. Stern and Dr. Daniels, she was among the first to question the probative value of bullet lead analysis. A 2000 report to the FBI that suggested the probability of a coincidental match might not be negligible led to the establishment of a NAS committee to explore the issue. Carriquiry also served as a member of the NAS committee on ballistic imaging.

Professor Carriquiry has spoken at the International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics (ICFIS) and participates in the Forensic Sciences certificate program at Iowa State University. She also serves on the OSAC subcommittee on Materials and Trace Evidence, and was recently named to the National Academy of Medicine and elected as a fellow to AAAS.

https://forensicstats.org/alicia-l-carriquiry/