The Future of Forensic Science: In 2007, University at Buffalo computer scientist Sargur Srihari, Ph.D., was selected by the National Academy of Sciences to explore the current status of the forensic sciences and to guide future research that would best serve the U.S. justice system and its citizens.
Dr. Sargur Srihari explains how science will be applied to forensics in the future. "Given sufficient time and resources, specific intelligent tasks that humans perform can be automated. One of the areas that I hope we will be able to develop is something I call "computational forensics." It is about developing algorithms and software to perform forensic analysis. The results of such analysis will be less prone to criticism that forensic testimony is tainted by bias. My research for the past 30 years has been in the field of computer science known as "pattern recognition." It is an area of artificial intelligence that is about developing algorithms to get computers to perform cognitive tasks normally performed by skilled humans. An example of such a skill is that of recognizing handwriting. The first task we considered was developing algorithms to compare handwriting samples. Computers allowed us to perform large-scale tests to show that indeed this kind of comparison can be done with a high degree of accuracy (Journal of Forensic Sciences, July 2002). We were also able to develop computational tools to assist the handwriting examiners.
Then my colleagues and I at CEDAR decided to look at fingerprints, specifically friction ridge patterns, the swirling lines that make up the print. With high-speed computers, we found we were able to conduct large-scale tests to determine the degree of individuality and uniqueness in a given fingerprint."
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