Simone Gittelson

Simone Gittelson, PhD, is Professor of Forensic Statistics at The George Washington University and works at the DC Department of Forensic Sciences.  She is specialized in the development and use of probabilistic models (e.g., Bayesian networks) for the evaluation and interpretation of scientific evidence. Her areas of research include the interpretation of DNA results given sub-source level propositions, probabilistic genotyping, the interpretation of biological results given activity level propositions, and the application of Bayesian inference, Bayesian networks, and decision theory to the evaluation of forensic science results.

Dr. 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. She pursued postdoctoral research 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). She has worked as a Mathematical Statistician in the Statistical Engineering Division at NIST, and as a Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Centre for Forensic Science of the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. 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.  She has been an affiliate and a member of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) since 2015, currently serving on OSAC’s Human Forensic Biology Subcommittee and Statistics Task Group.