Matt joined the Central Research Establishment of the Home Office Forensic Science Service in 1993 and was a founder member of the Digital Research Group in a period when Digital Forensics was becoming a field in its own right. He has had a national remit developing (technical methods, inference models, people, standards) and delivering (personal casework, group management) digital forensics throughout his career. Along with technical training, he was a course tutor on the “Expert Witness” courses run at the FSS developing court skills in others. After being made redundant in 2010 he continued this work at CCL Forensics and continues to be actively involved with research, balanced with casework.

Matt has spent many thousands of hours on personal casework, primarily focussed on large-scale complex operations. He has produced thousands of pages of opinion evidence and given hundreds of hours of oral evidence over a period of decades. He has never had any casework successfully challenged and has only received positive feedback including a “Director General Commendation” from the NCA for “exceptional contribution to protecting the public” in 2020

Matt’s publications include a number of scientific papers focussed on novel methods, assessment of uncertainty, and development of inference models. He has done so in order to establish the validity of the science and to encourage a culture of academic peer review at an international level (largely absent within the field of Cell Site Analysis). Findings have been presented at meetings such as the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences and Royal Statistical Society annual meetings, amongst other bodies and events) to optimise the impact of this work.

He recently received a Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences “PW Allen commendation” for one of the “most meritorious” scientific papers published in Science and Justice (judged on impact, novelty and quality of the science).

Matt acts at a national level in developing and implementing quality standards in the field and has always been involved in establishing quality frameworks, routinely drafting and reviewing SOPS, performing validations and designing/ implementing competency frameworks.

Matt is a member of UK Forensic Science Regulator Digital Evidence Group and chairs the Cell Site Analysis sub-Group and routinely provides lectures to experts, policing, legal professionals, academia and schools.