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University of New South
Wales, Sydney, Australia
6th July
2005
The School of Mathematics, UNSW,
proudly presents a one day workshop on Weight-of-Evidence for
Forensic DNA Profiless to be held at UNSW on 6th July 2005.
It is a satellite course to the AMSI sponsored Recent Advances in Biostatistics,
Bioinformatics and Markov chain Monte Carlo.
The course instructor will be:
Prof. David Balding (Centre for Biostatistics,
Imperial College, London, UK).
Who should take this course?
Any student of the interpretation of DNA profile evidence, either to
identify one or more individuals contributing to a crime scene DNA
sample, or to draw inferences about genetic relationships, such as
paternity.
What would I gain from this course?
You will learn how to use probabilities to evaluate evidential weight,
including how to calculate the likelihood ratios relevant to different
scenarios, both for identification (including database searches and
mixture profiles) and for relatedness. You will also gain appreciation
of the strengths and limitations of this approach, relative to some
alternative approaches to assessing evidential weight, and its practical
implications in a courtroom. We will also cover some population
genetics relevant to DNA profile evidence, and how to incorporate
population genetics effects.
The workshop will run from 9:30am - 5:30pm on the 6th of July at the
School of Mathematics in the Red Centre, UNSW, (final location
to be announced) with breaks for
lunch and coffee. The cost of the course will be $450
which includes lunch, coffee and a copy of the book "Weight-of-Evidence for
Forensic DNA Profiles" by David Balding.
To register, click here
Course Content
 The course
closely follows the book "Weight of Evidence for Forensic DNA Profiles(click book for
table of contents) Very little background knowledge is required. Inevitably in
practice there will be some advantage for those who are already familiar
with short tandem repeat (STR) DNA profiles and their forensic
applications, or who have had a first course in probability theory
and/or in population genetics, but all these topics will be briefly
introduced for novices. There will be exercises that require either a
calculator or a very good head for numbers.
Course Instructor
David Balding
David Balding has degrees in mathematics from the universities of
Newcastle (Aust.) and Oxford (UK), and has subsequently worked at the
Universities of London and Reading (UK) to develop mathematical and
statistical ideas in genetics and related fields. He is currently
Professor of Statistical Genetics at Imperial College London. Since
1993 he has occasionally served as an expert witness, primarily advising
on population genetics and statistical aspects of DNA profile evidence.
His publications related to the interpretation of DNA profile evidence
have appeared in forensic science, genetics, law, and statistics
journals. The course will be based on his recently published book
"Weight-of-Evidence for Forensic DNA Profiles" (Wiley, January 2005),
which in turn is based on courses presented to forensic science trainees
in London.
Organisers
Yanan
Fan, David
Nott, Scott
Sisson (School of Mathematics, UNSW)
Contact Email: biomcmc(at)maths.unsw.edu.au
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