Natural Traces: Natural Traces in forensic investigations - how the analysis of non-human evidence can solve crime

Literally any crime scene contains animal, plant, soil, microbial or environmental traces. Examples include pet hairs or saliva, pollen
and algae, soil and soil organisms like bacteria or nematodes, fungal spores, insects, and environmental traces in the form of
environmental DNA of any origin. Such biological traces can be found mainly on living people (suspects, victims), on objects like cars
or weapons, and on bodies not just on the surface but also in their surroundings like single or mass graves, or an aquatic environment.
In the EU, there is a lack of training opportunities in applied topics of forensic science at postgraduate level, such as the qualitative
and quantitative analysis of specifically such non-human biological traces. While many EU countries have forensic laboratories that
also such traces, a much broader, integrated knowledge base is needed, built on close cooperation between basic research in
academia and analysis and application in casework by forensic specialists. NATURAL JUSTICE aims to optimise the procedures for
taking and analysing non-human traces in order to meet the ever-increasing demands for identifying suspects and victims and to link
traces to different places, times or courses of action. The results based on this need a statistical robustness that will also hold up in the
courtroom under cross-examination.
The proposal aims for 10 PhD students with a background in life sciences. They will build their knowledge and experience in practical
forensics in training schools provided by academic, non-academic partners, and police academies or laboratories. The training
embeds biological evidence in a Bayesian framework, making it universally comparable with all other forms of evidence, by applying
novel probabilistic approaches to extract forensic useful information from metadata. It is truly cross-sectoral, with secondments at
end-users of the training (e.g. police forces) and joint supervision by PIs from different countries.