Awarded projects
Fingermarks
- Dr Simona Francese (Biomedical Research Centre; lead applicant)
- Heath Reed (Art and Design Research Centre)
- Dr Jonathan Wheat (Centre for Sports Engineering Research)
- Dr Rosalind Wolstenholme (Biomedical Research Centre)
Historically, one of the forensic methods to make fingerprint visible on surfaces is by dusting them with a brush using special enhancing powders. This enables the fingerprint to be lifted and its scan image to be used in the Police Database for comparison and match of the suspect.
In this project led by Dr S. Francese (BMRC) in collaboration with Dr R. Wolstenholme (BMRC), Dr J. Wheat (CSER) and Mr. H. Reed (ACES), a novel powder dispenser will be conceptualised and a low level of prototype will be built which dispenses the powder in a contactless way. This dispenser avoids the transfer of DNA occurring when a brush is used multiple times for different crime scenes as well as reducing the wastage when in the near future brushes and powder pots will likely become mono-use.”
A software is being engineered to assess the performance of the novel powder dispenser
