Scholarship in Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer.
Innovation and Expertise in Bloodstain Pattern Analysis.

Dr. Daniel Attinger is an engineer and scientist with expertise in a fundamental science called fluid dynamics. After a Ph.D. on the impact of drops, he acquired basic and advanced training in the forensic discipline called bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA). Between 2009 and 2020, he served as lead scientific investigator for three research projects on evaluating and advancing BPA, managing more than USD 2 million awarded by the US National Institute of Justice and Army Research Office. Attinger has performed BPA in actual crime scenes or on the basis of investigative photographs. He has been qualified as an expert witness in US State criminal courts. He has published widely cited scholarly work in leading peer-reviewed forensic and fluid dynamic journals. Dr. Attinger has served as a reviewer for Federal Agencies on research funding and forensic standards. He has developed academic and professional curricula. Other domains of his expertise are the physics of boiling and the related heat and mass transport. He is a fellow of the American Association of Mechanical Engineers and a member of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. Dr. Attinger has taught in French, English, German, and Spanish, and his work has been featured in US and international media. [Biosketch]

Contact Dr. Attinger if you:

  • want to learn about the reliability of current BPA methods, or BPA findings specific to a court case.
  • are seeking BPA methods that go beyond the state of the art, for, e.g., interpreting blood traces on fabrics, and reconstructing the position/motion of the people and objects involved in a bloody event.
  • want to learn about fluid dynamics and the scientific basis of BPA.
  • need a BPA expertise, science-based, peer-reviewed, and with minimum bias.
  • seek expertise in thermal-fluid problems involving boiling or evaporation.
  • need a partner, or reviewer for your research proposal to a competitive private or public funding agency.

The above services can be provided to academic groups or stakeholders of the criminal justice system.

“This is the kind of fundamental research that should be the basis for all forensic sciences.”

Publications

Have a look at our 100+ peer-reviewed publications on topics such as Bloodstain Pattern Analysis, Fluid Dynamics of Drops, and Boiling Heat Transfer. Many full-text versions are available on the Bepress repository.

Data and software

Advancing science relies on massive amounts of quality experimental data, or sophisticated measurement tools to see through the large amounts of data. So we produced open-access datasets of bloodstain patterns, and open-source software for the purpose of interpretation and reconstruction of blood traces.