The American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) Academy Standards Board (ASB) is the recipient of a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), intended to support the Academy's efforts to develop, approve, disseminate, maintain, and review forensic science voluntary consensus standards and best practices and to make them available to the public free of charge.

Ultimately, the $496,836 award will allow ASB to improve the quality and consistency of the standards developed for the forensic science community.

Support from the grant will allow ASB staff to provide more standards expertise to the growing number of consensus bodies (CBs), expedite processes, expand on partner collaborations, and conduct additional outreach and implementation efforts. The CB volunteers will benefit from input from subject matter experts, including document drafters from the NIST-administered Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science, to improve the quality and consistency of the documents.

"NIST's OSAC team looks forward to collaborating with AAFS on the delivery of high-quality standards to the forensic science community and the implementation of those standards by forensic science service providers," said John Paul Jones, forensic science standards program manager at NIST.

Access the full press release on the AAFS website.