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MEASUREMENT SCIENCE AND STANDARDS IN FORENSIC 

HANDWRITING ANALYSIS (JUNE 4-5, 2013)

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Ted Burkes was initially trained in forensic document examination and worked at the 

Mississippi Crime Lab from 1991 to 1998. He received additional training and continuing work 

at the FBI Laboratory from 1998 to present. Mr. Burkes earned status as a Diplomate of the 

American Board of Forensic Document Examination in 1997. He is a member of the Questioned 

Document Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, a member and currently the 

Secretary of the Southeastern Association of Forensic Document Examiners, and is the Chair of 

the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Document Examination (SWGDOC).

Dr. JoAnn Buscaglia is a Research Chemist with the FBI Laboratory in the Counterterrorism & 

Forensic Science Research Unit. Her research focus includes microscopy and microanalysis of 

trace evidence, interpretation of analytical data using statistical methods, assessment of the 

scientific basis for the premises underlying the impression and pattern evidence disciplines, and 

the evaluation of the accuracy and reliability of examiners’ decisions. Prior to joining the FBI

Laboratory in 1998, Dr. Buscaglia worked for 10 years in academia and as a consultant for both 

private- and public-sector forensic, environmental, and industrial hygiene laboratories. In 2013, 

she was honored for her scientific contributions to forensic science with the Paul L. Kirk Award, 

the highest honor given by the Criminalistics Section of the American Academy of Forensic 

Sciences.

Dr. Michael P. Caligiuri received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1986 and is 

currently a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. 

Dr. Caligiuri’s research focuses on the effect and understanding of drugs and disease on motor 

control and fine hand movement. He has served as the lead scientist on several federally and 

industry-sponsored studies identifying treatment response in psychiatric patients and has 

authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on movement disorders, brain imaging, and 

biomedical instrument development. His current research focuses on kinematic studies of 

normal and impaired handwriting to understand writer-based sources of movement variability.

Marie Durina is the Senior Forensic Documents Examiner at the San Diego Sheriff's Crime 

Laboratory. Ms. Durina joined the sheriff’s crime lab in 1998 as a Forensic Evidence Technician 

and began her training as a Forensic Document Examiner in 2003 under the tutelage of 

Dr. Linton Mohammed. She was promoted to Forensic Document Examiner in 2005 and to 

Senior Forensic Document Examiner in 2011. Ms. Durina has a bachelor’s degree in Business 

Administration from Baruch College, CUNY, a certificate of achievement in Criminal 

Investigations from Miramar College, and a graduate certificate of academic studies from 

Oklahoma State University in Forensic Examination of Questioned Documents. Ms. Durina has

published three papers related to Forensic Document Examination in peer reviewed scientific 

journals, and has given numerous presentations and workshops to various forensic 

organizations and law enforcement agencies. She is one of 113 forensic document examiners in 
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the United States who are currently certified by the American Board of Forensic Document 

Examiners (ABFDE), and she now serves on this certifying body’s Board of Directors. Ms. Durina 

is also a member of the American Society of Questioned Documents (ASQDE) and is on the 

organization’s finance committee. In addition, she is a member of the American Academy of 

Forensic Sciences QD Section (AAFS), a member of the Midwestern Association of Forensic 

Scientists (MAFS), and a member of ASTM. For the past three years, Ms. Durina has been an 

active member of the Scientific Working Group for Document Examination (SWGDOC) and 

works with this group to prepare standards and protocols for the entire Questioned Documents 

profession.

Janet Fenner Mason is a native Texan who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 

1971 with a Bachelor of Journalism degree. Her interest in photography led her to a position as 

a photographer and document examiner trainee in Lucile Lacy’s questioned document 

laboratory in Houston. Ms. Fenner Mason studied under and worked with Lucile Lacy for eight 

years prior to opening her own laboratory in 1985. She is a regular member of the ASQDE and a 

fellow in the AAFS (QD section), and she has been a Diplomate of ABFDE since 1983. She 

continues to work full-time as a forensic document examiner in private practice.

Dr. Katrin Franke is a professor of computer science and the director of the Digital Forensics 

and Cybercrime Investigation laboratory at Gjøvik University College, Norway. She obtained 

her Ph.D. at the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Groningen in the 

Netherlands. She is also an alumna of the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. 

Dr. Franke’s work experience includes conducting research at Fraunhofer IPK, Berlin, Germany; 

scientific project manager of research and industrial projects for software systems, now 

operating in banks in several countries; joining the Norwegian Information Security Laboratory 

(NISLab) since 2007, and obtaining full professorship in 2010. She has also published more than 

120 scientific articles, including a patent. Dr. Franke is a founding member and 2008 Chair

Founding member and 2008-2012 Chair of TC10 Computational Forensics, Intl. Association of 

Pattern Recognition (IAPR). She also received the IAPR Young Investigator award in 2009. Her 

Website is www.Kyfranke.com.

Dr. Donald Gantz is a professor of statistics and the chair of the Department of Applied 

Information Technology in the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University. He 

directs the Document Forensics Laboratory, which has partnered with Gannon Technologies 

Group to develop cutting-edge methodologies for the quantification and analysis of 

handwriting and for automated fingerprint matching. They are applying these methodologies 

to multi-language document exploitation and biometric identification. The lab is staffed by 

statistics professors, research professors, postdoctoral research fellows and graduate research 

assistants. Dr. Gantz received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Rochester.

Lisa Hanson received her Bachelor of Science from University of Wisconsin, River Falls. She 

began her forensic career at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Forensic Laboratory as a 

toxicologist and crime scene artist. In 1999 she was transferred to the Questioned Document 

Section and trained under Senior QD Examiner Debra Springer. After completing her training,

she applied for and completed board certification through the American Board of Forensic 
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Document Examiners in 2006. Ms. Hanson currently works as the Lead Technical Scientist at 

the BCA Forensic Laboratory in St. Paul, Minn. Ms. Hanson is a member of the Midwestern 

Association of Forensic Scientists, a provisional member of the American Society of Questioned 

Document Examiners, an assessor and member of the Technical Advisory Committee for 

the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, the Scientific Working Group for Questioned 

Document Examiners and presently works on the Board of Directors for ABFDE. 

John Paul Jones II is a Program Manager with the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology’s (NIST) Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES). He is currently researching the 

state of the Scientific Working Groups (SWGs) in the forensic industry and executing 

conferences to promote the application of advancements in measurement science to various 

forensic science disciplines. Mr. Jones has more than 14 years of scientific and management 

experience in the forensic industry. He previously served as an Innovation Technology Advisor 

with the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency where he managed 

programs that involved deployable forensic laboratories, sensitive site exploitation training, and 

development of various weapons of mass destruction detection technologies. Mr. Jones also 

served as a Program Manager with NIJ, where he managed the Forensic Technology Center of 

Excellence and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems (NamUs). He received 

his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech and a master’s of business 

administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Moshe Kam is the Robert Quinn Professor and Department Head of Electrical and Computer 

Engineering at Drexel University. He also serves as the Technical Coordinator of the U.S.

Department of Defense funded project ACIN (Applied Communication and Information 

Networking) and as director of the Drexel University's Center for Excellence in Information 

Assurance Education. Dr. Kam served as principal investigator on more than 20 large-scale 

projects funded by the NSF, ONR, NSWC, the US Army, Lockheed Martin, and DARPA. Educated 

in Tel Aviv (Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 1977) and Drexel 

University (Master of Science, 1985, Ph.D., 1987), Dr. Kam is a Fellow of IEEE "for contributions 

to the theory of decision fusion and distributed detection," (2001) and recipient of an IEEE Third 

Millennium Medal. He received a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator 

Award (1990-1995) and is a Licensed Professional Engineer registered in the State of 

Pennsylvania. He served The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers as Vice President

for Educational Activities and as Director of Region 2 (Eastern USA). 

Jane Lewis is certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners. Ms. Lewis is a 

member of ASQDE, a director representing the Questioned Document Section of the American 

Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), a fellow in the Questioned Document Section of AAFS,

and a member of MAFS. In 1985, Ms. Lewis finished an internship in the Questioned Document 

section of the Secret Service Lab in Washington, DC. She graduated with a Master of Forensic 

Sciences degree from George Washington University and obtained a job as a document analyst 

with the FBI in the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. Ms. Lewis soon moved up the Mall to 

the Secret Service Lab, but the lure of beer and bratwurst was too strong and she found herself 
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back home at the Wisconsin State Crime Lab in Milwaukee. Twenty-three years later, Ms. Lewis

retired from the Milwaukee Lab and moved on to greener pastures working in private practice 

in Milwaukee.

Brian Lindblom 

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Dr. Raymond Marquis graduated in Forensic Sciences in the University of Lausanne 

(Switzerland) and received his Ph.D. in Forensic Sciences in the field of handwriting 

examination, with experience in validating the fundamentals of this discipline through the 

analysis of character shape. Dr. Marquis also worked as a researcher in continuation of his

Ph.D. studies at the Institut de Police Scientifique (School of Criminal Sciences of the University 

of Lausanne). In parallel, he has been working as a questioned document examiner for civil, 

penal and private cases.

Kenneth E. Melson is a professorial lecturer in law at The George Washington University law 

School. For more than 30 years he has taught law and forensic science courses at both the law 

school and the Department of Forensic Sciences. In addition to teaching, Mr. Melson works in 

the General Counsel's office at the Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Service. Prior to that 

position, Mr. Melson was the Senior Advisor on Forensic Science in the Office of Legal Policy at 

the U.S. Department of Justice from August of 2011 to September of 2012. He also served as a 

co-chair of the Subcommittee on Forensic Science, Committee on Science of the National 

Science and Technology Council within the Executive Office of the President. In April of 2009, 

he was named as Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives 

(ATF) by President Barack Obama, where he served until August 2011. Prior to his service at 

the ATF, Mr. Melson was appointed by the Attorney General as the Director of the Executive 

Office for U.S. Attorneys, where his responsibilities included administrative oversight of the 94 

U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and being a liaison among the U.S. attorneys, other federal agencies, 

and Department of Justice (DOJ) components. After serving as a state prosecutor in Arlington 

County, Va., for almost 10 years, Mr. Melson joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the 

Eastern District of Virginia in 1983, becoming the First Assistant United States Attorney in 1986, 

a post he held until his departure in 2007. Mr. Melson is a graduate of the National Law Center 

at The George Washington University. He is a Past President of the American Academy of 

Forensic Sciences (AAFS) and a Distinguished Fellow. Mr. Melson is also a past chair of the 

Council of Scientific Society Presidents. For more than 15 years, Mr. Melson represented DOJ 

as a board member of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory 

Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB). He currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of 

Forensic Sciences and on the Ethics Committee for the AAFS. He has also published in scientific 

texts and legal journals.
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Dr. Mara Merlino is a graduate of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in social psychology at 

the University of Nevada, Reno, where her specialization is social psychology and law. Her 

research interests include the production and use of expert testimony in the courts, judicial and 

jury decision-making, judge and attorney education, the influence of extra-legal factors in the 

presentation of evidence, jury research, and litigation counseling. Dr. Merlino has conducted 

research under the auspices of the National Institute of Justice, the National Science 

Foundation, the Federal Judicial Center, the State Justice Institute, and other justice-related 

organizations. She is currently an associate professor of psychology and sociology at Kentucky 

State University.

Dr. Linton Mohammed is a private practitioner in the San Francisco Bay area. He has been a 

document examiner for more than 25 years and has testified more than 100 times in the United 

States, England, and the Caribbean. He is certified by the American Board of Forensic 

Document Examiners, Inc. and holds a Diploma in Document Examination from the Forensic 

Science Society. He is a past-president of the American Society of Questioned Document 

Examiners and is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (Questioned 

Documents Section). His doctoral research at La Trobe University (Australia) was focused on 

signature examination.

John Paul Osborn is a forensic document examiner with more than 30 years of experience in 

the century-old Osborn family practice. He was trained under the supervision of his late father, 

Paul Osborn, and granted professional certification by the American Board of Forensic 

Document Examiners. Mr. Osborn has been published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences and 

has presented research in the field to organizations including the American Academy of 

Forensic Sciences and the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. Mr. Osborn 

has appeared as a witness in numerous civil and criminal cases during his career, regularly 

working for United States Attorney’s Offices and area district attorneys, as well performing 

work for non-profit legal organizations such as the Legal Aid Society and St. Johns University 

Elder Law Clinic.

Brent Ostrum is a senior forensic document examiner with the Canada Border Services Agency 

(CBSA) in Ottawa, Canada. He began his career more than 25 years ago with the Royal 

Canadian Mounted Police before joining the CBSA in 2002. Mr. Ostrum is an ABFDE Diplomate 

and the sitting chairman of Document Section of the CSFS. He serves as a volunteer member of 

the Executive Council for St2ar. Mr. Ostrum is a student of logic, statistical inference, and 

evidence evaluation. His research interests include assessment of examiner competency, 

method validation issues and the broad application of image and data processing to FDE 

problems. 

David Parrett retired as the director and an examiner with the ASCLD/LAB International accredited 

Oklahoma County District Attorney’s State Laboratory. Mr. Parrett is currently in private practice, 

and continues as an inspector/assessor for ASCLD/LAB. He currently serves on the ASCLD/LAB 
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Proficiency Review Committee and is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences 

Questioned Document Section, Midwestern Association of Forensic Scientists Questioned Document 

Section and the Southwestern Association of Forensic Document Examiners. Mr. Parrett received a 

Bachelor of Arts and MBA from the University of Central Oklahoma. He has served as an adjunct 

faculty member with the UCO Forensic Science Institute, established by former FBI laboratory 

director Dwight Adams.

Dr. Christopher Saunders is currently an assistant professor of statistics at South Dakota State 

University. He has also held positions with George Mason University and the MITRE 

Corporation. Dr. Saunders was introduced to statistical research in forensic handwriting 

analysis as an Intelligence Community Post Doctorial Research Fellow supporting the FBI and 

the broader intelligence community. In general, his research focuses the statistics related to 

the interpretation and presentation of forensic evidence: usually in relationship to high 

dimensional data that naturally arises in such areas as the quantifications of handwriting data.

Matthias Schulte-Austum has developed and designed image processing algorithms and 

solutions for OCR applications since 1994. He has served in a technical leadership position in 

Siemens AG since 2004, managing the image processing development team in Konstanz, 

Germany. Since 2007 the team has broadened the scope of its work, taking on various related 

applications, including writer identification. Mr. Schulte-Austum has a master’s degree in 

information science from the University of Konstanz in Konstanz, Germany, a bachelor’s degree 

in electrical engineering from the Fachhochschule in Osnabrück, Germany and a bachelor’s 

degree in combined engineering from Coventry Polytechnic in Coventry, UK.

Kirsten Singer is a forensic document examiner with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office 

of Inspector General, forensic document laboratory in Washington, D.C. She received her 

training in forensic document examination with the Virginia Division of Forensic Science, and 

then worked federally with the IRS and U.S. Postal Inspection Service laboratories before 

transferring to VA OIG. Ms. Singer has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, and 

a Master’s of Forensic Science from George Washington University. She has been a document 

examiner for 27 years, and is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the 

American Society for Questioned Document Examiners, and is the current President of the 

American Board of Forensic Document Examiners.

Dr. Sargur Srihari is a computer scientist whose work is on automated systems for pattern 

recognition and machine learning. The principal impact of his work has been on statistical 

methods, on the analysis and recognition of handwriting and in computational methods for 

forensic impression evidence. Dr. Srihari is currently a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the 

Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, The State 

University of New York where he also holds adjunct professorships in the Department of 

Biostatistics and in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He teaches courses in machine 

learning and probabilistic graphical models. With support from the United States Postal Service 

for over 20 years, he founded CEDAR, the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and 

Recognition, in 1991, which had a major impact. He also played a leading role in establishing 
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the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, the International 

Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, and the International Workshop on 

Computational Forensics. Dr. Srihari has served on the National Academy of Sciences

Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community (2007-08), the National 

Library of Medicine Board of Scientific Counselors (2001-07), the National Institute of Standards 

and Technologies' Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Latent Print Analysis (2008-10). 

He has chaired committees of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. He is 

presently chairman of CedarTech, a corporation for university technology transfer. His honors 

include Outstanding Achievements Award of IAPR/ICDAR in Beijing China in 2011, Distinguished 

alumnus of the Ohio State University College of Engineering in 1999, Fellow of the International 

Association for Pattern Recognition in 1996, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics 

Engineers (IEEE) in 1995, and Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecommunications 

Engineers (IETE, India) in 1992. Dr. Srihari has authored more than 300 research papers, 65 of 

which are in journals (including one in the first issue of IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis 

and Machine Intelligence) and seven United States patents. Dr. Srihari received Bachelor of 

Science degrees in physics and mathematics from the Bangalore University (National College) in 

1967, a B.E. in electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, 

Bangalore in 1970, and a Ph.D. in computer and information science from the Ohio State 

University, Columbus in 1976.

Melissa Taylor is a program manager with the Law Enforcement Standards Office (OLES) at the 

U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. Her work 

within the Forensic Science Program focuses primarily on impression and pattern evidencerelated research, improving forensic science management practices, and integrating humanfactors principles into forensic sciences. Her recent publications include The Biological Evidence 

Preservation Handbook: Best Practices for Evidence Handlers (April 2013), Latent 

Interoperability Transmission Specification (February 2013), and Latent Print Examination and 

Human Factors: Improving the Practice through a Systems Approach (February 2012). 

Ms. Taylor is a member of the American Society for Quality, INTERPOL AFIS Expert Working 

Group, and International Association of Identification. She previously served the White House 

Subcommittee on Forensic Sciences as co-chair of the Latent Print AFIS Interoperability Task 

Force.

Peter Tytell has been a private practice document examiner in New York for more than 40 

years. He trained with his parents, Pearl and Martin, and took courses at Georgetown, the 

Institute of Paper Chemistry, Rochester Institute of Technology, and many other seminars and 

workshops. He has made numerous presentations and has taught and lectured in the U.S. and 

other countries. He is a diplomate of the ABFDE and a member of ASQDE and of the American 

Academy of Forensic Sciences Questioned Document section and received the section’s Ordway 

Hilton Award. In the area of standards, he has been active in the work of SWGDOC and is a 

long-time member and a Fellow of the American Society for Testing and Materials; he has 

served as Membership Secretary of ASTM Committee E30 on Forensic Sciences for the last six 

years, was the Chairman of the Sub-Committee E30.02 on Questioned Documents for its first 

decade, and is a recipient of the ASTM Award of Merit and the ASTM Forensic Sciences Award. 
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Rigo Vargas has been a forensic document examiner for 15 years and currently works for the 

Mississippi Crime Laboratory in Biloxi, MS. Mr. Vargas earned a bachelor degree in biology with 

a minor in chemistry from Indiana University in 1996 and trained at the Mississippi Crime 

Laboratory from 1998 until 2000 under the tutelage of Frank Hicks. He is a diplomate of the 

American Board of Forensic Document Examiners (ABFDE) and a regular member of the 

Southeastern Association of Forensic Document Examiners (SAFDE) and the America Society of 

Questioned Document Examiners (ASQDE). Mr. Vargas is the current vice chairman of the 

Scientific Working Group for Forensic Document Examination and the past chairman of ASTMs 

E30.02 subcommittee for questioned documents. 

Thomas W. Vastrick is an ABFDE board-certified forensic document examiner with more than

35 years of experience in both government and private practice. Mr. Vastrick received his 

training from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. He is a member of the American Society of 

Questioned Document Examiners and is QD Section Chair of the American Academy of Forensic 

Sciences. Mr. Vastrick has written one book on forensic document examination and was a 

contributing author to two others. In 2010, Mr. Vastrick’s proposal to NIJ to fund a 

comprehensive statistical study of handwriting and hand printing characteristic frequency of 

occurrence was approved; the study began in 2011. At the MSSFHA Conference, Mr. Vastrick 

will report on how the study began, the methodologies used and the current status of his 

project.

Mark Walch is the president of Gannon Technologies Group and inventor of the graph-based 

recognition technology that is the foundation of FLASH ID. The same concepts that drive FLASH 

ID also provide the basis for other biometric tools. The original concepts were developed to 

recognize handwriting in multiple languages, and they ultimately proved to be very powerful 

pattern-matching tools not only for handwriting, but also fingerprints and other forms of 

impression evidence. Mr. Walch holds advanced degrees from the University of Michigan and 

Yale University.

Heather Waltke is the associate director for the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at 

the National Institute of Justice, the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. 

Department of Justice (DOJ). Prior to accepting the position at DOJ, Heather was the lead 

forensic document examiner at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Financial 

Management Service. During her 11 years performing forensic document analysis at the U.S. 

Treasury Department, she examined U.S. Treasury checks for alterations, counterfeiting, and 

performed forensic handwriting comparisons in cases of suspected forgery. Ms. Waltke has a 

Masters of Forensic Science from George Washington University.

Dr. Jeffrey P. Woodard earned his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering at the University 

of Idaho, his MBA at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his M.S. in electrical and computer 

engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. in Psychology at 

Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is a principal engineer at MITRE CORP where he specializes in 

image processing. He is a member of Sigma Xi and a senior member of the IEEE. Dr. Woodard 
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has served on the editorial board for numerous journals and conferences. He has published 

numerous peer-reviewed journal and conference articles and has been awarded nine patents.