(BOWLING GREEN, Ohio) — Bowling Green State University President Mary Ellen Mazey and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine today announced that the university and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office have been awarded nearly $440,000 in grant funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The grant will be used by the university and the Ohio Attorney General’s Center for the Future of Forensic Science to help identify ways to streamline the analytical process of testing Sexual Assault Kits (SAKs).
The joint project, titled “Use of Statistical Modeling to Optimize Sexual Assault Kit Analysis,” will employ data mining of the results of the over 11,000 SAKs processed by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) as part of the Attorney General's Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative to date to develop best-practice models for SAK analysis.
“This is another exciting collaborative project,” said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. “Testing these old sexual assault kits is leading to convictions, and by probing the data, we can become even more efficient in the testing process.”
“We’re proud to be part of this important effort,” said BGSU President Mary Ellen Mazey. “It is an excellent opportunity for our faculty and students to contribute their skills and expertise to improving a process that benefits both law enforcement and the larger society.”
The leader of the project is Dr. Jon Sprague, director of the Ohio Attorney General’s Center for the Future of Forensic Science at BGSU. Co-investigators on the project are BGSU’s Dr. James Albert, a professor of statistics, and BCI’s Dr. Lewis Maddox, DNA technical leader. Also on the project are D.J. Heckman, a first-year master’s student in statistical analysis, and Jaimie Kerka, a BCI data analyst working at the agency’s Richfield, Ohio, location.
When Attorney General DeWine took office in 2011, he learned that law enforcement agencies across Ohio had thousands of kits that had never been tested because they had not been sent to a crime lab. In response, he requested that all unprocessed SAKs related to a crime be turned over to BCI for testing at no cost to local law enforcement. In total, the SAK Testing Initiative has resulted in over 13,000 SAKs coming to BCI for analysis.
While BCI analyzes everything contained in the kits, it is believed that the information resulting from the analysis will help shape the initial sequence of which pieces to test in which order. Determining this sequence is expected to result in cost savings associated with greater efficiency.
It is also anticipated that crime-solving benefits from the DNA profiles could be added to the national database maintained by the FBI.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Center for the Future of Forensic Science is a joint endeavor between the university and the Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation laboratory located on BGSU’s campus, and promotes collaboration between the two. The center fosters cutting-edge forensic science research and provides educational programs for BGSU students, forensic scientists, criminal investigators and other law enforcement practitioners.
-30-
Media Contacts:
Dan Tierney: 614-466-3840
BGSU - David Kielmeyer: 419-372-8587