Stefan Schmitt

Stefan Schmitt, M.S. is Project Lead for International Technical Services at Florida International University’s National Forensic Science and Technology Center.

Schmitt is a forensic scientist with a background in crime scene investigations and forensic anthropology at Florida International University’s Global Forensic and Justice Center. His work focuses on training international agencies in the forensic documentation and investigation of crime scenes, and forensic laboratory accreditation. Internationally, Mr. Schmitt has worked for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia. He has provided forensic expertise and training in the documentation of crime scenes for Human Rights organizations, the United Nations, and national authorities around the world in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Algeria, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Russia.

Prior to joining Florida International University, he was the director of Physicians for Human Rights’ International Forensic Program where he directed the international forensic training program, and led forensic investigations and teams of forensic experts in international death investigations and human identification needs assessment and gap analyses in countries such as Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Since 2008, he has trained a group of human rights, law enforcement officers, and physicians who formed the non-profit and non-governmental Afghan Forensic Science Organization. The organization now is a clearinghouse for forensic science in the country, spearheading information campaigns against torture, sexual violence and in 2016 conducting the country’s first exhumation. From 1996 through 2006 Schmitt worked at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as a Crime Scene and Digital Video Enhancement Analyst. Before that he lived in Guatemala, where he founded the country’s first forensic anthropology team in 1992, today known as the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology.

He has published various book chapters and articles on the forensic documentation of mass graves and the role of human identifications in transitional justice contexts and is a co-author of the “The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Deaths: The Revised United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions," the AABB “Guidelines for Mass Fatality DNA Identification Operations” and "DNA Technology and Field Dynamics in Conflict-Related Mass Fatalities" in the Journal of Genocide Studies and Prevention.

Mr. Schmitt is fluent in English, Spanish, and German and has language skills in French and Dari.