The 11^th International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, or ICFIS 2023, is set for June 12-15 of this year. It will be held at the Faculty of Law (Juridicum) of Lund University, Lund, Sweden. While I am saddened that I cannot attend this particular meeting, several years ago I had the pleasure of going to the 2014 International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics, or ICFIS which was the 9th iteration of the conference. I wrote a blog post about that meeting some time ago.

I can say, based on past experience alone, that this meeting is well worth attending. That’s particularly true if you are interested in the logical approach to evidence evaluation, but it would benefit any forensic scientist. You will not find a better collection of brilliant people all focused on forensic inference, in the broadest sense.

Forensic scientists, lawyers, academics—they will all be there.

Conference Purpose

All ICFIS conferences have similar objectives and purpose:

This international conference – in short ICFIS2023 – unites lawyers, statisticians and forensic scientists in their interest in optimal reasoning concerning forensic evidence. Technical developments in biological, physical, chemical and digital forensic disciplines are fast and have an increasing impact on law enforcement and the justice system. Examples are DNA profiling, fingerprint and illicit drug analysis, and analysis of large digital datasets for intelligence purposes. Whatever the type of evidence, it can only be of value when it is properly gathered, analysed, evaluated, and communicated by the scientist. Moreover, it should be understood by the legal decision maker. This requires sound statistical and logical methods, and good communication between lawyers and scientists.

The conference promotes the interaction between providers and users of forensic evidence. It focuses on probabilistic methods for the evaluation of forensic evidence, and their use in law and law enforcement.

The conference provides a forum for oral presentations and posters. Furthermore, the first day of the conference consists of workshops.

… ICFIS 2023 website ‘About’ page

Conference Themes

The seven themes for this year include:

1. Evidence, legal proof and the psychology of factfinding
2. Education, communication and the human factor
3. Evaluating evidence
4. Impression evidence
5. Inference beyond the source
6. Interpreting evidence
7. Civil applications, statistical modelling and methods and data analysis outside the evidence evaluation framework