Ed German is a charter member of the Facial Identification Scientific Working Group (FISWG).
Since 1971, he has worked on six continents and lived on three continents during forensic employment specializing in
human identification.
Ed retired from the CIA in 2015 as a Senior Research Scientist/Technical Intelligence Officer at the pay grade GS15/Step
10 (combining CIA and FBI civil service years).
He retired from the US Army in 2005 at the rank of CW5 with 25 years active duty (retired as the second highest ranking
CID Special Agent worldwide). Ed received the Legion of Merit Medal (LOM) from the US Army Military Intelligence Command
in 1997 and received a second LOM from the US Army Criminal Investigation Command in 2005 when he retired as the Chief
of Intelligence for US Army worldwide law enforcement. The Legion of Merit is the US military's highest peacetime medal.
Ed is a Distinguished Member of the world’s largest and oldest forensic science organization, the International
Association for Identification (IAI), and recipient of the IAI’s highest forensic science award (Dondero award). He
previously chaired the IAI's Facial Identification Subcommittee and the IAI's Biometrics Information Services
Subcommittee.
Ed is a Certified Biometrics Professional, IEEE and a Certified Latent Print Examiner, IAI.
He is an affiliate member of the US Government’s OSAC subcommittee responsible for establishing national standards,
guidelines, and best practices for forensic face examination
(https://www.nist.gov/organization-scientific-area-committees-forensic-science/facial-identification-subcommittee).
Ed is a Member of the US Government’s OSAC subcommittee responsible for establishing national standards, guidelines, and
best practices for forensic fingerprint examination (https://www.nist.gov/osac/friction-ridge-subcommittee).
He has testified as an expert witness more than 100 times at civilian and/or military judicial proceedings in Tennessee,
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Florida, Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Iowa, California,
Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, New York, Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic of the Philippines, and the US Territory of
Guam. Ed was one of three fingerprint experts presenting direct testimony on behalf of the US Government in the nation’s
first Daubert hearing on fingerprints: US v. Byron Mitchell, US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
(https://onin.com/fp/bmitch2.pdf). The other two experts were the senior fingerprint expert from the FBI Laboratory and
the senior fingerprint expert from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
During the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, Ed introduced Japanese research on superglue fuming and reflected ultra-violet imaging
systems to the English-speaking world (that fingerprint research doubled the amount of latent prints recovered from
non-porous evidence worldwide). In 1981, he was the first scientist, worldwide, to testify to laser-detected
fingerprints, and in 1983 he was the first American forensic scientist to use digital imaging technology in a forensic
laboratory.
Ed supervised the Illinois State Police (ISP) forensic laboratory system's latent fingerprint program when ISP became
the world’s first accredited forensic laboratory system in the 1980s.
In 2016, Ed German returned to the hometown where he and his loving wife grew up. He serves as the Forensic Lead at the
Macon County (Illinois) Sheriff’s Office where his mother worked for many years (into her late 70s). Ed provides face
and fingerprint forensic support to ten local and state law enforcement agencies in Illinois.