Announcements

International Conference - India - March 2024

Trends in Forensics, Law and Criminology: Empowering Criminal Justice in 21st Century and Beyond. This 3-day meeting will be held in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, between March 20 and 22, 2024. Registrations are open until February 25, 2024. All the available information is here

International Summer Course 2024 – Copenhagen University

The Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Copenhagen is hosting another edition of the Summer Course on Forensic Genetics and Massively Parallel Sequencing. This is a great opportunity to “learn more about the fascinating work in forensic genetics, MPS, and get hands-on experience with data analysis within MPS.” For more detailed information, please visit the website and/or send an email to ForensicGeneticsCourse@sund.ku.dk. Applications are open until April 1st, 2024.

ISFG CONGRESS 2024 | NEWS

The 30th Edition is approaching, and Santiago de Compostela (Spain) is ready to welcome all of us! ABSTRACT SUBMISSION IS OPEN since December 1st and the deadline is March 29, 2024. Registration will open soon. On the congress website, click on the “KEEP ME UPDATED” button to receive all the relevant news. A special thank you note to the Congress Presidents, Ángel Carracedo and María Victoria Lareu, and all members of the Local Organizing Committee!

The 20th Portugaliæ Genetica: DNA - Ancient and New

21-22 March 2024 | Hybrid Event This edition will focus on Ancient DNA and issues relevant to forensic scientists and practitioners covering the following topics: Genetics and Genomics; Mutations and Evolution; Ancestry Paradoxes; Population Genetics - uses & abuses. The meeting will be held at I3S (Institute for Research and Innovation in Health) in Porto, Portugal, on March 21 and 22, 2024. You may also attend online. Registrations for in-person or online format are open and the early-bird deadline is January 22, 2024. Call for abstracts will be open until the 8th of January. Find out much more, including the program and confirmed speakers, on the website here

Peter Schneider Symposium 2023

On May 31, 2023, the Peter Schneider Symposium 2023 was broadcasted live from the Institute of Legal Medicine, University Hospital of Cologne (Germany) in memory and honor of Peter Schneider, on his birthday. The recording of the sessions is now available for viewing through the ISFG YouTube channel here This is the "Program” Thank you to the organizers for such a wonderful tribute and for sharing this with everyone! Arabic-Speaking WG meeting 2024 Next meeting of the Arabic-speaking WW will be held in Dubay, March 5th-7th during the World Police Summit 2024 Please visit https://www.worldpolicesummit.com/conferences/forensic-science/ for further information. 2023 ESWG Scientific Meeting - Abstract submission deadline extended! Abstract submission deadline extended for 5pm GMT on the 14th of April 2023. To submit your abstract please visit the website The meeting will be held in London and hosted by Denise Syndercombe Court and colleagues at King’s. Meeting will start at 9am on Monday 15th of May and close on the 16th of May at 12:30 to allow for departure to Budapest for those attending the Haploid Marker meeting on the 17th-20th of May 2023. Information about the World Police Summit Conference 2024 already available The World Police Summit 2024 will be held from 5th to 7th March in Dubai. Please visit https://www.worldpolicesummit.com/conferences/forensic-science/ for additional information 2023 ESWG Scientific Meeting - Abstract submission deadline extended! Abstract submission deadline extended for 5pm GMT on the 14th of April 2023. To submit your abstract please visit the website The meeting will be held in London and hosted by Denise Syndercombe Court and colleagues at King’s. Meeting will start at 9am on Monday 15th of May and close on the 16th of May at 12:30 to allow for departure to Budapest for those attending the Haploid Marker meeting on the 17th-20th of May 2023. 12th Haploid Markers Conference (HM2023) – Preliminary Program The preliminary program for the HM2023 Conference (17-20 May, Budapest) is now available! Please visit the website. Registrations are still open so do not miss this important event! ISFG Summer School | Virtual Edition 2023 It is our pleasure to announce the launch of the official website of the 2023 virtual edition of the ISFG Summer School! Save the dates! 28th August – 8th September The website includes details on the 19 workshops, the presenters, time schedules, registration fees, and more. Registration for ISFG members only will start on April 17, 2023. Do not miss this opportunity to learn from very experienced colleagues in the field and mark the dates for registration in your calendar! ICFIS in Lund, Sweden, postponed to June 2023 The 11th International Conference on Forensic Inference and Statistics (ICFIS) at the Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden has been postponed to 2023 and the new dates are 12-15 June 2023. The conference web pages are found at https://www.law.lu.se/#!ICFIS. This international conference 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.

ISFG Summer School 2023

In order to provide an interesting set of workshops for the 2023 online ISFG Summer School, a survey was carried out and the results obtained from over 170 responses are summarized here Thank you for your contributions! The virtual 2023 Summer School will take place between August 28 and September 8, 2023. Visit the website and register! International Summer Course 2023 – Copenhagen University The Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Copenhagen is hosting a Summer Course on Forensic Genetics and Massively Parallel Sequencing. This is a great opportunity to “learn more about the fascinating work in forensic genetics, MPS, and get hands-on experience with data analysis within MPS.” For more detailed information, please visit the website and/or send an email to ForensicGeneticsCourse@sund.ku.dk. Applications are open until April 1st, 2023. 2023 ESWG Scientific Meeting - Call for abstracts - Save the date! The meeting will be held in London and hosted by Denise Syndercombe Court and colleagues at King’s. Meeting will start at 9am on Monday 15th of May and close on the 16th of May at 12:30 to allow for departure to Budapest for those attending the Haploid Marker meeting on the 17th -20th of May 2023. A flight from London Gatwick airport at 4.15pm with Easyjet is direct to Budapest. We are now accepting abstracts for oral presentation on the following topics of interest:

• Kinship
• Interesting kinship cases
• New technologies that can be applied to kinship

Abstract submission deadline is 5pm GMT on the 31st of March 2023. To submit your abstract please visit the ESWG London 2023 website

Peter Schneider Symposium 2023

A Symposium on May 30 and 31, 2023, is being organized by colleagues from the Institute of Legal Medicine, University Hospital of Cologne (Germany) in memory and honor of Peter Schneider. Please read the invitation here Peter Schneider Symposium 2023 If you would like to participate and/or need more information, please write an email to the organizers at rechtsmedizin-dna@uk-koeln.de Note that the workshops on the first day will be in German and the lectures, on the second day, in English. The meeting is free except for the “get together & dinner” and the cemetery tour.

2023 | Cycle of Workshops - The state-of-the-art in forensic genetics | Porto | Portugal

A set of three Forensic Genetics Workshops are being organized at the I3S Institute in Porto, Portugal, in March of this year (23 and 24). “Cycle of Workshops - The state-of-the-art in forensic genetics” will be a hybrid event (on-site and online) entirely dedicated to the current status of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), DNA mixtures and X-chromosome markers. The Scientific (António Amorim, Iva Gomes, Nádia Pinto) and Organizing (Camila Costa, Catarina Xavier, Marisa Faustino, Sofia Antão Sousa, Verónica Gomes) Committees would like to welcome everyone to the lovely city of Porto and enjoy the full program available here This event, sponsored by the Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Group of the ISFG (GHEP-ISFG), will be held mostly in Spanish and Portuguese, with some lectures in English. Early-bird fees are available until February 7. Late registration until February 21. Whether or not you can travel to Porto, this is a great opportunity for learning! Workshops: 1. "NGS advancement topics: markers, data interpretation, casework applications" (full day workshop) Christopher Phillips | María de la Puente | Ana Mosquera | Catarina Xavier | Óscar García 2. "DNA mixture interpretation" (half day workshop) Probabilistic genotyping software: Limitations and differences of the existing computational tools and respective consequences on the evaluation of the evidence. Lourdes Prieto | Pedro A. Barrio 3. "X-Chromosome markers: complex pedigrees, chromosomal abnormalities and kinship analyses" (half day workshop) Daniel Kling | Nádia Pinto

Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Forensic Analysis of Human DNA scheduled for 2025!

Announcement from the GRC 2025 chairs: Katherine Gettings & Titia Sijen and GRC 2025 co-chairs: Athina Vidaki & Susan Walsh During the Covid-19 pandemic, the bi-annual Gordon Research Conference on Forensic Analysis of Human DNA got postponed 2 years, while the bi-annual ISFG meeting was postponed 1 year due to which 2022 accommodated both meetings. To have these two meetings again in alternating years, the GRC (co)-chairs have requested that the next GRC meeting will be held in 2025, and we are pleased to announce that this was granted by the GRC Board of Trustees. So, when making your multi-year conference planning, you may consider to join the GRC meeting in 2025. When and where this GRC will be held, will be decided and announced later. We hope you consider joining the 2025 GRC!

12th Haploid Markers Conference (HM2023) - Registration open

The registration for the HM2023 Conference (17-20 May, Budapest) is now open. Please visit https://www.convention.hu/Event/Registration/HM20EN to register on-line You can also submit abstracts (talks are preferred, posters are welcome) via http://www.hm2020.hu/ until 10th March 2023 Do not miss this important event!

Meeting of the Arabian Speaking Working Group (ASWG) at the World Police Summit 2023

The ASWG will meet at the World Police Summit 2023 in Dubai. Please visit the link https://www.worldpolicesummit.com/conferences/forensic-science/. The World Police Summit will be taking place from the 7 to 9 March, 2023 at Dubai World Trade Centre, Dubai, UAE and in its second edition will provide an unparalleled platform to explore the current challenges facing police forces and the latest technological advancements, strategies, and innovations across the law enforcement and security spectrum. Do not miss this event!!

ISFG Summer School 2023

In order to provide an interesting set of workshops for the 2023 online ISFG Summer School it would be extremely useful if you can provide us with information on your interests and suggestions. We therefore would be thankful if you can answer a few questions through the following link: ISFG Summer School 2023 - Workshop survey. With your answers and the feedback from last summer school we hope to define an interesting program that meets the needs and expectations of the colleagues from our field.

DNA mixture interpretation workshop at ISFG 2022

A workshop about the interpretation of complex mixtures will be held at the 29th ISFG Congress in Washington DC by Corina Benschop, Oyvind Bleka and Peter Gill. Different software solutions will be demonstrated: EuroForMix, DNAStatistX, CaseSolver and DNAxs. The workshop materials can be downloaded using this link: ISFG 2022 Mixture Workshop

6 Polski Kongres Genetyki

W tegorocznym Polskim Kongresie Genetyki zadebiutowała podsekcja Genetyki Sądowej. W trakcie trwającej 27-30 czerwca 2022r. konferencji 2 sesje były poświęcone genetycznym badaniom dla potrzeb wymiaru sprawiedliwości. Zarówno wykład plenarny (Accuracy of Using the Skin Microbiome as a Forensic Tool, Patrick K. H. Lee), prezentacje zaproszonych gości (Advances and perspectives in forensic DNA typing addressing crime and missing persons current challenges M.Buś, Population sequencing-based GWAS for height reveals major phenotype modifying variants and points on short stature selective pressure in Sardinia, M.Żołędziewska)i obie sesje cieszyły się dużym zainteresowaniem i wywołały liczne dyskusje. Nagrodę Złotego Paragrafu za najlepszy poster w kategorii Genetyka Sądowa otrzymała Aleksandra Pisarek z MCB UJ za pracę: Assessing the potential for sex determination from EPIC and GSA microarray data. Serdecznie gratulujemy! Wszystkim uczestnikom serdecznie dziękujemy za aktywny udział w spotkaniu, a Organizatorom za możliwość włączenia jako podsekcja do Kongresu.

Registration for ISFG 2022 in Washington D.C.

Please register for the 29^th ISFG Congress in Washington D.C.:

• https://www.isfg2022.org/attend/registration-pricing/

Don't miss the educational workshops! All details can be found here:

• https://www.isfg2022.org/scientific-program/workshops/

And last but not least, register for the Gala Dinner at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center ­– it's an "all inclusive" event:

• https://www.isfg2022.org/gala-dinner/

International attendees: In order to visit the United States of America, you may need to obtain a visa. We encourage you to contact your local Consulate or the Consular Section of your local US Embassy if you need a visa and to determine the appropriate time for the visa application process to be completed. You may request a letter of invitation to aid in this process.

• https://www.isfg2022.org/attend/international-attendees/