Elisa van den Heuvel started in 2005 as scientific forensic handwriting expert at Netherlands Forensic Institute. Her scientific background lies primarily in human motor control with special emphasis on handwriting/signature movement execution. In chronology, she received her M.Sc. from Radboud University of Nijmegen in 1996, and her Ph.D. at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VUA) in 2000. During her PhD research she also worked at Motor Control Lab, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA as a visiting research scholar. In 2000, she started as postdoc at Biomechanics at VUA where she studied preclinical symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Since 1997, Elisa van den Heuvel has published several journal articles and peer reviewed conference articles. She is a board member of the International Graphonomics Society since 2008. Elisa co-organized a Signature Verification Competition for on- and offline Skilled Forgeries (SigComp09) facilitated by the conference organization of ICDAR 2009, Barcelona, Spain, and co-presented Tutorials on Computational Forensics and Forensic Handwriting Expertise at ICDAR2007 and ICDAR2009. She has been invited to give lectures and workshops at international forensic conferences about the current status of and her ongoing research in forensic handwriting analysis and is one of the organizing members of the 4NSigComp2010 at ICFHR2010.