Simone Gittelson

Dr. Simone Gittelson holds a B.Sc. in Forensic Science, a M.Sc. in Forensic Science, subject area Identification, and a Ph.D. in Forensic Science, all from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.  Her Ph.D. dissertation, “Evolving from Inferences to Decisions in the Interpretation of Scientific Evidence”, earned her the prestigious award of Prix de la Banque Cantonale Vaudoise.  After her doctoral studies, Dr. Gittelson was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc Mobility Research Fellowship, which she used to pursue postdoctoral research in the interpretation of low-template DNA results in forensic science at the Department of Biostatistics of the University of Washington and in the Applied Genetics Group of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  Dr. Gittelson is specialized in the development and use of probabilistic models (e.g., Bayesian networks) for the evaluation and interpretation of scientific evidence. More specifically, her areas of research include the interpretation of DNA results (e.g., mixtures, low-template DNA), probabilistic genotyping (i.e., semi-continuous and fully continuous models and software programs), and the application of Bayesian inference, Bayesian networks, and decision theory to the evaluation of forensic science results.  Dr. Gittelson has worked as a Mathematical Statistician in the Statistical Engineering Division at NIST, as a Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Centre for Forensic Science of the University of Technology Sydney, and as a Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Forensic Sciences at George Washington University.  In addition, she has given over 30 workshops on the probabilistic evaluation of forensic evidence to forensic science practitioners, researchers and lawyers in the United States, Europe, and Asia.  Dr. Gittelson is actively involved in the forensic science practitioners and research communities. In the United States, she has been an affiliate and a member of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) since 2015, currently serving as a member of OSAC’s Human Forensic Biology Subcommittee and Statistics Task Group.