NCSI Partners

NCSI’s Principal Science and Technology Partner: The Bryson Center for Judicial Science Education at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

Housed in the Department of Genetics within the School of Medicine, the Bryson Center provides the broad scientific content underpinning NCSI’s initiatives.  Those initiatives recently have included the foundation Seminar on Science in the Courtroom at the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit; the technical workshop on health care treatment outcomes evidence; and The Judges’ Statistical Tool Kit. Inquiries about these initiatives are welcome.  The Bryson Center is Directed by James P. Evans, MD, Ph.D., in close collaboration with Genetics Chair Fernando Manual-Pardo de Villena, Ph.D.  Prof. Kate Foreman is the Bryson Center’s coordinator. Readers may request copies of the Bryson Center’s five year development plan approved by its National Advisory Board of scientists and judges.

Associate Partner: The National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder Laboratories  

The Division of Materials and Chemical Analysis initiated in August 2017 the laboratory and didactic education of judges seeking certification in molecular and comparative forensics. The partnership has been led by Thomas J. Bruno, Ph.D., a NIST laboratory director who has invented portable forensic kits capable of rapid detection and characterization chemical residues related to crime scenes.  Plans are underway to extend and expand this Concentration among a longer term plan for judges’ summer school laboratories.

Associate Partner: The Division of Neurobiological Research in Children of the Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha

Headed by James R. Blair, Ph.D., the Boys Town Research Hospital houses one of the Nation’s premier neuro-imaging research laboratories.  Judges seeking certification in developmental neurobiology, brain function and risk assessment will attend technical workshops led by Dr. Blair and his nationally renown senior staff beginning in June 2019.

Associate Partner: The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 

NCSI divides its genetic engineering concentration across the life sciences.  Human genetic engineering is vested in the UNC Bryson Center, above.  Environmental and agricultural genetic engineering instruction is vested in the University of Illinois Woese IGB.  Technical workshops at IGB began in November 2018.  Expansion plans will accommodate 60 additional judges.With UNC and IGB assistance, jurisdictions’ chief judicial and administrative officers also may invite NCSI’s traveling science and legal advisors - complete with laboratories - to provide programs of various length and depth in human genetic treatments, environmental genomics and agricultural genomics. 

Associate Partner: The Ecology Program of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 

Led by Gary L. Andersen, Ph.D., the Ecosystem and Climate Sciences Concentration will begin in 2020.  The Berkeley Lab’s Ecology Program has attracted a premier core of environmental and climate research staff.  Dr. Andersen and the Ecology Programs’ staff are perfectly positioned to inform NCSI’s judicial training about the accepted, questioned, and rejected research expected to underpin environmental cases and climate restoration controversies, particularly those that will deal with environmental restoration controversies.

Associate Partner: RENCI - The Renaissance Computer Institute of the University of North Carolina, Duke University and the North Carolina State University

Led by computer scientists Stanley C. Ahalt, Ph.D., this partner will provide the technical workshops underpin the NCSI Concentration Data Science, Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.  Assisted by Sarah Davis, Esq. of RENCI’s staff, NCSI will initiate this Concentration is 2020.

NCSI thanks all of its partners.  In an increasingly complex scientific and technical world, it would not be possible to launch our science and technology resource judges initiatives without the neutral and independent experts leading and staffing our organizational partners.