Katherine Scafide

Background

About Katherine Scafide

Katherine (“Kat”) Scafide is a tenured Associate Professor, forensic nurse and scientist in the George Mason University’s School of Nursing. Her years of forensic nursing practice caring for living and deceased victims of violence has contributed significantly to her program of research. Her research primarily focuses on advancing equity in the medical identification and forensic documentation of injuries, particularly for patients of color, through innovative uses of technology. She has received several federal awards to support these efforts. Kat began her journey as a bruise scientist during her doctoral work at Johns Hopkins where she garnered the name “paintball” lady for her unique method of creating injuries. At George Mason, she collaborated with colleagues at Texas A&M and Georgia State Universities, conducting one of the largest and most diverse bruise studies in modern forensic history. Their investigation identified specific wavelengths of visible light which significantly improved the detection of bruises over current practices across diverse skin tones. Those findings have since garnered national media and celebrity attention. Currently, Kat is developing and evaluating clinical guidelines to support the implementation of this technology into forensic nursing practice. Her interdisciplinary research teams include a collaboration here at George Mason with CHHS Health Informatics and Volgenau School of Engineering to investigate whether deep learning of the digital images can be used to model bruise age as well as develop a national repository for bruise images. Kat is heavily involved in service at Mason, several professional organizations, and the government (NIST). She teaches primarily in the PhD program in the School of Nursing where she mentors doctoral dissertations.