Forensic Pathways has announced a forward-looking research and development program, which will further the company’s aim to become a leading innovator of new technology and IP in Europe. The company has committed half a million pounds to research and development and this includes the sponsorship of three PhDs at local Universities.

The company’s reputation for innovation was exemplified in December 2008 when the company launched the world’s first Innovation Report with the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, at 10 Downing Street, London.

Managing director Dr Richard Leary MBE said: “We have decided to invest in three new areas of forensic research to develop new technology. We are committing very significant funds to three new projects. These will be overseen by myself and our chief scientific officer, Chang Tsun Li. Each project will focus on the development of new technology for use worldwide.

“In 2007 Forensic Pathways won the Middle Market Award for Export of new technologies and we committed at the Award Ceremony to continue this and make a major new drive for innovation in the UK. These new projects are a result of that and we are committed to achieving our aims.”

The first project involves the development of better techniques to enhance the use of evidence in crimes where guns are used. Dr Richard Leary said: “The current state of the art technology has been in place for a long time and it is time to innovate old practices and use updated technologies. We are now in the 21^st Century and industry is basically using the same techniques it was 15 years ago. That technology is so embedded that innovation has effectively stood still. This needs to be put right.”

The second project is in the field of digital imagery.  Dr Richard Leary added: “Every digital device we use in the modern world like cameras, mobile phones, laptops and PDAs emit digital signatures. These are created by the unique features of each device and are created when the device is used and each signal acts like a digital fingerprint. We have developed the means to detect some of these signals and use them to identify evidence crucial in forensic investigation. We have made significant progress in this field and we are now turning what we have learnt into a range of technologies for the 21^st Century.”

The third area of research involves making sense of the enormous amounts of information that is being created in the world. This involves the ability to routinely make sense of extremely large and complex data sets for example those on the World Wide Web, those generated by public bodies and banks to name but a few. Some 147 million people use the internet, 57 million read blogs and 12 million keep their own blog.

Additionally, some 74% of internet users (55% of the entire adult population) went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get news and information about the US election. On April 22 - May 4 the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) received 1.2 million views of flu-related material on YouTube, 46.6 million webpage views and attracted 99,000 followers on its Twitter feed. Dr Richard Leary said: “In the modern world we all create enormous amounts of data. These collections have become so big and so complex that we are in danger of losing the ability to make sense of it. One good example quite recently was the collapse of the financial markets. There was no shortage of data, no shortage of individual signals that problems were afoot, but what was missing was the ability to see the big picture and the growing risk inherent in the markets.

“We are sometimes deluded into thinking that our ability to create lots of data somehow equals an ability to know what is going on in the world. We have been conditioned into thinking that technologies like Google and Yahoo provide an ability to search for that knowledge. This could not be further from the truth. These technologies are merely catalogues of indexed information but they are often ranked by people according to who can pay most. What is needed is the ability to make sense of the data and extract fast time knowledge. We are developing techniques that bring together the ability not only to collect, store, search and retrieve data, but also techniques that will help us understand the root causes of problems that are buried deep in complex data sets.”