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Forensic science, Forensic interpretation, Forensic biometrics, Automatic speaker recognition, Dactyloscopy
Netherlands, Switzerland

Biography

Didier Meuwly is born in Fribourg, Switzerland. After completing a classical education (Latin/Philosophy), he graduated as a criminalist and criminologist (1993) achieving his PhD (summa, cum laude - 2000) from the School of Forensic Science (Ecole de Sciences Criminelles) of the University of Lausanne. Specialising in the automation and validation of the probabilistic evaluation of forensic evidence, specifically, biometric traces, he currently shares his expertise between The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) (an agency of the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security) and the University of Twente, where respectively, he holds the position of principal scientist (2007) and chair of Forensic Biometrics (2013).
In pursuit of his passion for forensic science he has held the positions of senior lecturer at the University of Lausanne (1999-2002), and senior forensic scientist in the field of forensic biometrics at the R&D department of the Forensic Science Service (FSS), then an executive agency of the UK Ministry of the Interior (2002-2004). Following his role as project lead in the field of probabilistic interpretation of fingermarks, he has led ground-breaking scientific initiatives within the NFI, as scientific lead (2004-2006) and manager of the fingerprint section (2006-2007), having played a pivotal role in the implementation of the probabilistic evaluation of fingerprint evidence.
Didier continues to make significant contributions to forensic science, evident in his active evidentiary, supervisory, and advisory commitments. He has served as a criminalist in several international terrorist cases on request of the ICTY, STL, UN, UK and CH. He is known and respected for advocating for novel, evidence-based, approaches to traditional paradigms, including the use of perceptual artificial intelligence and its usefulness in forensic evidence evaluation. Notably, he has provided the automatic speaker recognition discipline with a scientifically valid approach to computing the probative value using automatic speaker recognition algorithms, in the form of a likelihood ratio. The use of this approach has become widespread in most forensic areas where AI algorithms are used to compute probative value for the inference of identity of source.
Through his active collaborations, Didier continues to positively drive the development and validation of biometric forensic evaluation systems and importantly, their implementation in the forensic case workflow. He has been involved in several international research projects (EU, US) and has authored and co-authored more than 60 scientific publications and book chapters in the field of forensic science (see list of publications). He has been involved in the supervision of 21 PhD theses and 6 MSc. Didier is involved in the editorial board of Forensic Science International (2015) and currently serves as an associate editor of FSI (2019). He is also a member and lead editor of the ISO Technical Committee 272 Forensic Science, developing the ISO standard 21043 (2018).
Since the early beginnings of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes, Didier has remained a highly engaged and active member. He contributed to the organisation of the 1st European Academy of Forensic Science (EAFS) conference in Lausanne (1997), and has participated actively in each EAFS conference since. He is a founding member of the Forensic Speech and Audio Analysis and has served in the steering committee of the FSAAWG as secretary (1997-2004). He is also a founding member of the European Fingerprint Group (2000). He has served on the steering committee of the EFPWG as secretary, treasurer, and quality correspondent (2000-2013) and has organised the 2010 EFPWG annual meeting in Delft. In 2011-2012 he was part of the Competence Assessment Project of the ENFSI Quality and Competence Committee (CAP-QCC), and has been a member of the ENFSI Research and Development Standing Committee (R&DSC) since 2017. He has participated to several ENFSI Monopoly projects, as participant (P4 - 2011-2013) and project leader (BGFKE - 2012-2014, UNLOCK - current). From 2012, Didier has also been invited as the Guest Editor of the proceedings of the EAFS conferences (2012, 2015, 2018 and 2022).

Activities

Employment (2)

University of Twente: Enschede, NL

Employment
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University of Twente Research Information (Pure Portal)

Netherlands Forensic Institute: The Hague, Zuid Holland, NL

2004-07-01 to present | Principal Scientist (Direction)
Employment
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Didier Meuwly

Peer review (2 reviews for 1 publication/grant)

Review activity for Forensic science international. (2)