Associate Professor James Curran

James Curran completed a PhD in Statistics at the University of Auckland in 1997 on the statistical interpretation of forensic glass evidence under the direction of John Buckleton and Chris Triggs. He followed this with a FORST post-doctoral fellowship at in the Statistical Genetics group at North Carolina State University with Bruce Weir. During his time at NC State, James gave expert testimony and provided case analyses in criminal trials involving DNA evidence. James returned to New Zealand in 1999 to take a faculty appointment in the Statistics department at the University of Waikato. James moved to the Statistics department at the University of Auckland in 2005, and became an Associate Professor in 2008. James' research interests are in the effect of population genetic behaviour on models for the interepretation of DNA evidence, computing, and statistical problems in forensic science.