Karen L. Amendola has over two decades of experience in public safety research, testing, training, technology, and assessment. With the Police Foundation for over 20 years, Dr. Amendola currently serves as the Chief Behavioral Scientist. Amendola earned both her Ph.D. and M.A. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from George Mason University, as well as an M.A. in Human Resources Management from Webster University. Karen has worked with dozens of local, state, and federal agencies. Dr. Amendola was Associate Editor for Psychology and Law for the ten-volume Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice published by Springer Verlag, New York (2014).
In addition, Dr. Amendola was the lead investigator of a study of eyewitness identification case outcomes. A series of articles on that research and it’s outcomes were publishied in the esteemed Journal of Experimental Criminology (Amendola & Wixted, June, 2015). With her colleagues, Amendola’s recent work “An experimental study of compressed work schedules in policing: advantages and disadvantages of various shift lengths” was also published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology and was awarded the 2012 Outstanding Field Trial by the Division of Experimental Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (a synopsis of the Shift Length Experiment is available online).
Dr. Amendola is a member of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, American Psychological Association, American Society of Criminology, and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and served over five years on the Scientific Review Committee of the National Center for Credibility Assessment (at the time called the Department of Defense Polygraph Institute).
Most recently Karen served as Chair of the National Partnership for Careers in Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security, and as a member of the research advisory board of the Innocence Project in New York.
Karen joins the CopDoc Podcast on February 1, 2021.