CALL FOR PAPERS

Tutorial and Special Session on Forensic Voice Comparison and Forensic Acoustics at 2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, Cancún, Mexico, 15–19 November 2010.
http://cancun2010.forensic-voice-comparison.net/

The official call for papers for the Pan-Am/Iberian meeting is now out and the deadline for submissions is 1 June 2010.
http://asa.aip.org/meetings.html


In February 2009 the National Research Council (NRC) Report to Congress on Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States found that:

“[S]ome forensic disciplines are supported by little rigorous systematic research to validate the discipline’s basic premises and techniques. There is no evident reason why such research cannot be conducted” (p. 22).

“The development of scientific research, training, technology, and databases associated with DNA analysis have resulted from substantial and steady federal support for both academic research and programs employing techniques for DNA analysis. Similar support must be given to all credible forensic science disciplines if they are to achieve the degrees of reliability needed to serve the goals of justice.” (p. 13)

Over the last decade, a small number of researchers (principally in Australia, Spain, and Switzerland) have been working on developing demonstrably valid and reliable forensic voice comparison with evidence evaluated using the same framework as is applied to the evaluation of DNA evidence.

Meanwhile in the Americas there has been little interest in this field of research.

The NRC report gives a new impetus for conducting forensic voice comparison research and holds out the hope for new funding opportunities in this area.

The 2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics provides an excellent opportunity to bring together researchers from Iberia and other parts of the world with researchers from the Americas to help foster research in this area in the Americas.

It also provides a venue for an exchange of ideas between researchers working on acoustic-phonetic and signal-processing approaches to forensic voice comparison.