Naomi Kaplan-Damary, PhD

Dr. Naomi Kaplan-Damary is a lecturer at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of Law. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees are from the Hebrew University, as is her PhD on the subject “Statistical Methods for Evaluating Forensic Evidence.” Dr. Kaplan-Damary completed post-doctoral research at the University of California, Irvine under the auspices of CSAFE (Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence). Her research interests include: Forensic Science, especially the strengthening of its scientific foundations; Forensic Evidence and the effect of its presentation on officers of the court; the influence of Cognitive Bias on forensic investigation, and Wrongful Convictions.

Dr. Kaplan-Damary focuses not only on theoretical issues but on the practical application of her research in cooperation with the Israel Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science as well as the Public Defender’s Office. She is a member of several committees in OSAC (Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science), a section of NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), the body responsible in the US for developing better methods for analyzing forensic evidence. She is also the Principal Investigator of a 3-year research project with the Israel National Police in cooperation with CSAFE: “Estimating the Probability of RAC (Randomly Acquired Characteristic) Location on a Shoe Sole.”