Bryce Westlake, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Ph.D., Simon Fraser University; Burnaby, British Columbia

Curriculum Vitae [pdf]; Personal Website

Contact Information:

Email: bryce.westlake@sjsu.edu
Phone: 408-924-2743
Office: HB 210B

Spring 2025 Office Hours:  TBA

About Dr. Bryce Westlake

Dr. Bryce Westlake completed his Ph.D. in Criminology from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Dr. Westlake is an associate professor in the Department of Justice Studies and a faculty member of the department’s Forensic Science program. He developed and leads the program’s digital evidence concentration and is constructing the Silicon Valley Digital Forensics Laboratory. Located near SJSU, this laboratory will provide students with valuable practical, hands-on experience through year-long internships. In collaboration with criminal justice agencies, students will process digital evidence from active criminal cases to decrease the backlog. 

In collaboration with an international team of researchers, including law enforcement agencies and government partnerships, Dr. Westlake’s primary research focuses on developing automated tools to combat the distribution of child sexual abuse material (i.e., child pornography) online. Dr. Westlake is also engaged in a multi-phasic study examining health and safety within BDSM communities. This research aims to destigmatize participation through a deeper understanding of the social and emotional enrichment that practitioners receive from activities.

Areas of Interest:

• Computer/Digital Forensics
• Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Material
• BDSM
• Cybercrime
• Social Network Analysis

Selected Recent Publications

Westlake, B., Brewer, R., Swearingen, T., Ross, A., Patterson, S., Michalski, D., Hole, M., Logos, K., Frank, R., Bright, D., & Afana, E. (2022). Developing automated methods to detect and match face and voice biometrics in child sexual abuse videos. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, 648, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.52922/ti78566

Guerra, E., & Westlake, B. G. (2021). Detecting child sexual abuse images: Traits of child sexual exploitation hosting and displaying websites. Child Abuse & Neglect, 122, 105336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105336

Brewer, R., Westlake, B., Hart, T., & Arauza, O. (2021). The ethics of web crawling and web scraping in criminological research: Navigating issues of consent, privacy and other potential harms associated with automated data collection. In A. Lavorgna & T. Holt (Eds.), Researching cybercrimes (pp.435-456). Palgrave Macmillian: Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74837-1_22  

Westlake, B. G. (2020). The past, present, and future of online child sexual exploitation: Summarizing the evolution of production, distribution, and detection. In T. Holt & A. Bossler (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of international cybercrime and cyberdeviance (pp.1225-1253). Palgrave Macmillian, Cham. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78440-3_52 Download 2020 publication

Westlake, B.G. (2018) Delineating victims from perpetrators: Prosecuting self-produced child pornography in Youth Criminal Justice Systems. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 12(1), pp. 248-261. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.495776. Download 2018 publication

Westlake, B.G., & Frank, R. (2017). Seeing the forest through the trees: Identifying key players in online child sexual exploitation distribution networks. In T. Holt (Ed.), Interdisciplinary Research on Cybercrime (pp.189-209). New York: Routledge Download 2017 publication