As a member of the university’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Nicole Stanaback ’23 takes images of fingerprints and develops methods to enhance them. Her work is already ready for her honorary paper and she believes in her own career.
August 10, 2022
Nicole Stanaback ’23 spent part of the summer imaging fingerprints as part of an exciting hands-on research project. Her job gave her the opportunity to have an immersive experience while learning how to use the technology she uses as she begins her career.
A forensic major, Stanabuck is a member of the university’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) program. As part of the project, she took 3D images of her fingerprints and is working on a Photoshop optimization protocol. Augmentation was applied to the image, placed in her Universal Latent Workstation (ULW) at the FBI, and given a quality score.
“It’s important that the fingerprint receives an automatic quality score by ULW and a manual quality score by analysts,” explains Stanaback. “These he two quality scores are used to determine whether a fingerprint is suitable for identification.”
“It helped me prepare for my future career”
A member of the university’s honors program, Stanabuck says his experience at SURF will help him further develop his honors thesis, which he plans to work on this fall. Her work has also helped at least one of her graduate students collect data for her master’s thesis. The experience was invaluable, says Stanabuck.
“R&D was an area of particular interest to me, so SURF gave me more research experience,” she said. “This experience also helped me improve my ability to solve problems and communicate my thoughts in a clear way. because I couldn’t.”
Stanabuck worked under the guidance of Assistant Professor Dr. Josep de Alcalaz Fosseur. She says she appreciates the opportunity to learn from her expertise and experience with casework, especially latent prints. She plans to submit her research to the American Academy of Forensic Medicine, and she hopes to present her research at her organization’s conference this winter.
“Dr. Fossoul motivated and pushed me to go beyond what I thought was my limit,” she said. “What I thought was my limit at the time was just one small step on the way to reaching my full potential. This project helped me learn how to use ULW. This is important as many of our potential print inspectors use this software in their daily casework.It has helped me prepare for my future career.”
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