JFDE Editorial Team
Editor in Chief
| Dr. Michael Pertsinakis (Crete) holds a PhD in Forensic Sciences from Staffordshire University in the UK, and an LBB in Law from the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. He is a Senior Forensic Document and Handwriting Examiner in “Chartoularios P.C. Laboratory of Questioned Documents Studies” (associate member of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes), as well as a lawyer in Crete, Greece. Furthermore, he is a Lecturer of Criminology in the MBS College of Crete and an external collaborator with the Staffordshire University and the University of Alcalá (Madrid), as a PhD Supervisor. He is a member of the Association of Forensic Document Examiners, the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences, the International Graphonomics Society, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and the Heraklion Bar Association. |  |
Assistant Editor in Chief
| Angelo Marcelli (Italy) is Professor of Computer Engineering and the Director of the Natural Computation Laboratory at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering and Applied Mathematics of the University of Salerno, Italy, where he has been Chairman of the Board of the Ph.D program in Information Engineering from 2007 to 2013 and Dean of the School of Engineering from 2014 t0 2018. From 2007 to 2011 he has been the President of the International Graphonomics Society. Angelo Marcelli research activity focuses on neurocomputational modeling of handwriting learning and execution, automatic handwriting recognition, handwriting analysis for early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, handwriting identification, signature verification and historical document processing. On these topics he has authored more than 150 papers in international journals, books and conferences. He is the co-founder of Natural Intelligent Technologis Ltd, a spin-off company that markets Masquerade, a software tool for forensic handwriting analysis. |  |
Advisory Board
| Joseph Barabe (USA)is Research Microscopist at Barabe & Associates LLC, where he consults in art, document and historical objects analyses, and instructs at Hooke College of Applied Sciences in Westmont, IL, teaching workshops in pigment identification, printing process identification, microscopy for forensic document examiners, and photomicrography. Mentored by Dr. Walter C. McCrone, famous for his Shroud of Turin analysis, he served for 24 years as Director of Scientific Imaging and Senior Research Microscopist at McCrone Associates in Westmont, IL. His analytical duties included the analysis of art, ancient documents and historical artifacts using a variety of analytical tools including polarized light microscopy and instrumental methods as appropriate. Forensic document examinations include paper, ink and toner comparisons, altered documents, writing sequence determinations, and printing process identification. Famous projects: analysis of the ink on the Gospel of Judas, the Archaic Mark forgery, the Voynich Manuscript analysis and the Zapruder film imaging project. |  |
| Carolyne Bird (Australia) is the Science Leader - Document Examination at Forensic Science SA in Adelaide, Australia where she is responsible for the day to day management of the Document Examination section. As a caseworker, she is responsible for the provision of forensic document examinations including handwriting and signatures, indented impressions, ink and additions/alterations. Carolyne has a Doctor of Philosophy in Human Bioscience from La Trobe University, Melbourne, where her research was focussed on investigating forensic handwriting examiners’ skill in detecting unnatural handwriting processes. Carolyne has been involved in a number of national and international working groups and committees related to forensic document examination, covering human factors, development of standard methods, quality assurance, and education and training. She has co-authored papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals on the topic of forensic document examination, and cognitive bias, and has presented workshops on unnatural handwriting behaviours and a forensic handwriting examination method. |
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| Dr. Michael Caligiuri (USA) attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison where he received a Ph.D. in the neurosciences with an emphasis in human motor control and movement disorders. He has published over 120 research articles on disease and drug-related effects of movement including handwriting and co-authors the book ‘The Neuroscience of Handwriting: Applications for Forensic Document Examination”. For over 30 years, his research has been supported by grants from the VA, NIH, NIJ, and several private foundations. He served as member and on the editorial board of NIST's Work Group on Human Factors in Handwriting Examination. His research over the past 10 years has focused on handwriting kinematics to enhance our understanding of cognitive, neuromotor, and behavioral sources of variability in handwriting and the FDE decision-making processes. |  |
| Carina Fernandes (Portugal) is a Senior Forensic Handwriting and Document Examiner, as well as Laboratory Manager at NCForenses – Ciencias Forenses Laboratory in Porto, Portugal (Associated Member of the European Network of Forensic Handwriting Experts). She has a Master´s Degree in Legal Medicine and a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from the University of Porto. For her research in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, she received the Bryan Found Research Award for "Best Student Presentation" attributed by the Association of Forensic Document Examiners. Currently she is a PhD candidate in Forensic Sciences at the University of Alcalá, in Spain and a team member of the STEFA G8 project on “Forensic Examination of Digitally Captured Signatures and Handwritten Entries” coordinated by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes. She is also a member of the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences and the International Graphonomics Society. |  |
| M. Patricia Fisher, (USA) Diplomate of the Board of Forensic Document Examiners and past Editor of the Journal of Forensic Document Examination (JFDE), has over 35 years full time experience examining questioned documents. She received a Masters degree in 1994 from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, California. For the professional project required for the degree, she investigated the Trawniki identification card that was used during the 1980s trial in Israel to convict John Demjanuk for crimes committed by Ivan the Terrible at the concentration camp of Treblinka in Poland. The Israeli Supreme Court would eventually acquit Demjanuk after conclusive proof surfaced that he had not been Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka. Three weeks of document examiners’ testimony still left unanswered questions. As part of her research, she examined original documents in the Nazi archives in Moscow, Warsaw, and Berlin. Ms. Fisher applied her academic background in journalism to write papers and oversee the JFDE from 2005 through 2018. During this time, she changed the format and continued to establish the JFDE as an international journal dedicated to research on handwriting identification, as well as on the technical aspects of examining questioned documents. |  |
| Dr. Antonio Parziale (Italy) is a Postdoctoral research fellow with the Natural Computation Lab at University of Salerno, Italy. At the same university, he received his master’s degree in Electronic Engineering in 2009 and his Ph.D. in Information Engineering in 2016. Dr. Parziale’s major research themes include neurocomputational models of motor system, handwriting analysis and recognition. As with regards to handwriting analysis, his research is led with particular emphasis on design and development of automatic systems, based upon handwriting generation models, for signature and writer verification and early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. He has actively involved in the community of forensic document examiners since 2011 with the aim of defining a quantitative approach to both feature evaluation and comparison that combines forensic handwriting examination best practices with pattern recognition methodologies. In May 2012, Dr. Parziale co-founded Natural Intelligent Technologies s.r.l., to develop artificial intelligence software for handwriting analysis and recognition. He has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in journals and conferences on the topics of pattern recognition, handwriting analysis and brain modeling. He has served international journals and conferences as reviewer, technical program committee member and guest editor since 2010. |  |
| Gordon Sharfe(New Zealand) graduated with a BSc from Canterbury University and has worked in the New Zealand Police Document Examination Section (NZPDES) for the past twenty eight years. This included completing the section’s five year training programme, covering all facets of questioned document examination and handwriting identification. The NZPDES provides forensic document examination services to the New Zealand Police, other Government departments and private companies. Gordon has been the Chief Document Examiner since 2006. His research interests include printing processes and office machine identification. Gordon has presented training on these topics to examiners in a number of different laboratories and authored the chapter Writing Instruments and Printing Devices in the Wiley Encyclopaedia of Forensic Science (2009). He chaired the Document Examination programme for the Australia New Zealand Forensic Science Society 17th Biennial International Symposium and co-chaired the DE programme for the 23rd Symposium. |
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| Andrew Sulner (USA), MSFS, JD, D-BFDE is a board-certified, third-generation forensic document examiner and an attorney who earned a Master of Science degree in Forensic Science and a Juris Doctorate degree (with Honors) from George Washington University. He has been consulted nationally and internationally as an expert in determining the authenticity of documents for over 40 years and his expert testimony has been favorably cited in numerous federal and state court decisions. In addition to being a Diplomate of the Board of Forensic Document Examiners (BFDE), Mr. Sulner is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) and a member of the Association of Forensic Document Examiners (AFDE), the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the New York, Florida, California and District of Columbia Bars. He is past Chair of the Jurisprudence Section of the AAFS and a past President of the BFDE and The Society of Medical Jurisprudence and Forensic Sciences. Mr. Sulner has authored numerous professional publications and presentations on the subject of forensic document examination. His most recent contribution to the continuing education of document examiners, lawyers and judges is an 87-page law review article appearing in Volume 43, issue No. 3 of the Seton Hall Law Review. |  |
| Hans-Leo Teulings, (USA) most known to document examiners for developing the Movalyzer® software to conduct scientific research on handwriting, received his bachelor's in physics and mathematics in 1973 and his master's in biophysics in 1975 at the University of Nijmegen (Radboud University) in The Netherlands. At the same university, he received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology in 1988 at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior (previously Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information). From 1975 to 1993, Dr. Teulings pioneered recording and processing of handwriting movements in fine motor control research using pen tablets connected to digital computers. Lacking any software to record pen tablets, Dr. Teulings developed his own software program. In 1982, he co-organized the very first International Graphonomics Conference, which was held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In June 1997, Dr. Teulings co-founded NeuroScript, LLC, to develop software and hardware to record, process and analyze fine motor control. He has been the Principal Investigator (PI) in more than 10 Small Business and Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and II projects, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). |  |
| Emily J. Will, (USA) MA, D-BFDE, is a board-certified, forensic document examiner in private practice in the US. Ms. Will is currently the Vice-President of the Forensic Specialties Accreditation Board (FSAB), Treasurer of the BFDE, and an active member of NADE (National Association of Document Examiners), and the IGS (International Graphonomics Society). Emily served as a member of NIST's Working Group on Human Factors in Handwriting Examination. Over her 34 year career Ms. Will has given many professional presentations and written articles including, "Inferring Relative Handwriting Speed from the Static Trace" (JFDE Vol. 22, Pgs. 155-162). |  |
The Journal of Forensic Document Examination (JFDE) is the official publication of the Association of Forensic Document Examiners (AFDE). It is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes research papers, case studies, technical articles and book reviews pertinent to the field of document examination. AFDE is not responsible as a body, nor are the editors of the JFDE individually or as a group, for the statements and opinions advanced in this publication.
