Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Working Group

Grupo de Habla Española y Portuguesa de la ISFG / Grupo de Línguas Espanhola e Portuguesa da ISFG. GHEP-ISFG Homepage Contact info@ghep-isfg.org

PROFICIENCY TESTING

The GHEP-ISFG Proficiency Test (Basic Level) is accredited under the standard ISO/IEC 17403:2010. Participation is possible for everyone (both GHEP and non-GHEP members). This Proficiency Test is available in Spanish, Portuguese and English. A final report, available in Spanish and English, is released every year. The report includes: description of items, assigned values, anonymized individual results, methodology used, comments and recommendations from the organization, remarks and suggestions from the participants. Additional information can be found at http://ghep-isfg.org/en/proficiency/ Currently, the GHEP-ISFG PT also includes the analysis of markers through Massive Parallel Sequencing.

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES OR MEETINGS

Next GHEP-ISFG meeting

The 2025 meeting will be held in Barcelona, Spain, in September. More information available soon.

GHEP-OS Online School

The GHEP Online School (GHEP-OS) is an educational event which takes place twice a year, during autumn and spring, in a virtual format. The first edition was held in October 2024 (Autumn) and the second edition is scheduled for March 2025 (Spring). All the information is available here

PREVIOUS MEETINGS

2024

The 2024 annual GHEP-ISFG meeting was held in Salta, Argentina, from 4 to 6 of June, 2024. The Local Organizing Committee, represented by Nidia Modesti (Institute of Forensic Genetics, Córdoba, Argentina), in collaboration with the SAGF (Argentinean Society of Forensic Genetics), hosted a wonderful event, with over 130 people participating. All available information is on the Meeting website There were four pre-meeting workshops held: WORKSHOP 1 – Statistics in mixture interpretation | Lourdes Prieto & Pedro Barrio WORKSHOP 2 - X-STR markers in kinship analyses | Nádia Pinto & Leonor Gusmão WORKSHOP 3 - DNA Methylation in Forensics | Ana Freire-Aradas & Ana Mosquera WORKSHOP 4 – Biogeographical Ancestry | Vânia Pereira & Leonor Gusmão During the meeting, 2 mini-simposiums were organized:
- DNA databases and
- Identification of missing persons in Argentina. A special tribute to our beloved Prof. António Amorim was held in the meeting. António was an active and continuous member of the GHEP since the founding of this society and member of the Executive Committee for 8 years (2004-2012). Three oral presentations were awarded with the António Amorim Scientific Prize:
- Following in the footsteps of the Native Americans through South America - Analysis of distribution patterns of male sublineages of the haplogroup Q - Vania Pereira et al.
- Kinship Analyses Involving Individuals with Klinefelter Syndrome – Marisa Faustino et al.
- Machine Learning models for iris color prediction in the population of Buenos Aires (Argentina) – Cecilia Catanesi et al. The best poster presentations awarded with the António Amorim Scientific Prize were:
- A Perspective of the Autosomal Ancestry and Maternal Lineage of the Montubios of the Rural Communities of the Province of Santa Elena, Ecuador – Katherine Barrionuevo Pérez et al.
- Mito-genomes in native populations from Ecuador: informative power and discrimination of haplogroups B4b – Rodrigo Flores-Espinoza.
- Sensitivity and specificity of DIP-STR polymorphisms used to resolve highly unbalanced DNA mixtures – Sofía Angeletti et al. Finally, during the General Assembly, a new GHEP Executive Committee was elected for the 2025/2026 biennium: Pedro Barrio (President), Manuel Crespillo (Secretary) and Ronaldo Carneiro (Treasurer). Leonor Gusmão will be Vice President.

2023

The 2023 meeting of the Spanish and Portuguese-Speaking Working Group of the ISFG (GHEP-ISFG) was held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on July 26-28, 2023.
Hosted by Beatriz Martínez and colleagues from the Instituto de Investigaciones Inmunológicas, University of Cartagena, over 90 participants were present in this event, which included various topics, namely:
- 2 Symposiums on the scientific and legal aspects of expert reports in the context of Forensic Genetics, one more oriented to geneticists and the other to magistrates;
- Two full-day workshops on the use of mitochondrial DNA in the forensic field and on forensic genetic genealogy;
- A half-day presentation/discussion of the GHEP-ISFG/INTCFM Proficiency Test (EIADN 2023);
- A mini-symposium on DVI;
- The presentation/discussion of the Advanced Theoretical Challenges (ATC 2023), and
- The GHEP-ISFG General Assembly for GHEP members only.
You may find the detailed program here and more details on the GHEP-ISFG website

President

Vice President

Secretary GHEP-ISFG

Treasurer

Publications of the GHEP-ISFG

Complete list