Associate Professor Gary Edmond

Associate Professor Gary Edmond has been awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. The grant is worth around $760,000 over four years for research on a project titled, Suspect sciences: Enhancing emerging identification technologies and forensic expertise.

The ARC-funded project aims to enhance national security and the safety of Australians. It represents an innovative response to uncertainties associated with the use of identification technologies in national security operations, policing and criminal prosecutions. The project will provide those developing and using identification technologies and evidence with a much clearer indication of their capabilities and limitations, it will help to prevent exaggerated interpretations and will reduce the incidence of mistaken identifications. It will encourage more efficient use of surveillance infrastructures and prevent citizens from being ‘identified’, accused and wrongfully convicted on the basis of unreliable or error prone techniques and opinions.

In congratulating Gary on his success, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor David Dixon remarked on the strength of research at UNSW Faculty of Law with Gary’s award following the recent success of George Williams who was awarded an inaugural Australian Laureate Fellowship for research into anti-terror laws.

‘It is worth noting that UNSW is one of only two Go8 universities to be awarded Future Fellowships in law and UNSW Law is the only law school to have both a Future Fellowship and a Laureate Fellowship,’ Professor Dixon said.

Gary Edmond is Director of the Program on Expertise, Evidence and Law, Co-Director at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law in the Faculty, and Coordinator of Research Students. His research concerns the relationship between science and law, particularly the operations of evidentiary and procedural evidence as it relates to admissibility and forensics.

The Australian Government announced Future Fellowships in 2009 to encourage outstanding mid-career researchers to engage in Australia-based, preferably collaborative and interdisciplinary research in areas of national priority.