Cal Lightman (Reimagined)

Dr. Cal Lightman is the world's leading deception expert, a scientist who studies facial expressions, body language, voice and words to discover if someone is lying and why. Lightman can spot what are known as "microexpressions" - split-second, involuntary facial expressions that reveal what a person is really feeling.

Calvin Timothy Lightman was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. After graduating from high school, Lightman went on to Cornell University. As an Army Reserve Officers Training Corps cadet, he attended and graduated from the U.S. Army Air Assault School the summer before his senior year. Lightman graduated from Cornell with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army via ROTC. While at Cornell, he decided he would become an infantry officer.

Upon completing the the Infantry Officer Basic Course, Lightman attended the U.S. Army Airborne School. After airborne training, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division. Lightman served as a platoon leader in the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He eventually rose to the position of a company executive officer. Lightman later attended and passed Ranger School, earning the Ranger Tab. Soon after being promoted to Captain, he applied to join Special Forces. After completing the Special Forces Assessment and Selection course, Lightman was accepted into the Special Forces Qualification Course at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. Upon completing the entire training process, he joined the United States Army Special Forces. As a Green Beret, Lightman served as a detachment commander in the 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group.

With numerous commendations, he left the Army after eight years of service and entered the Ph.D. Program in psychology at Columbia University. A little while later, Lightman obtained a private investigator license and was eventually hired by a Manhattan-based private investigation firm as a part-time investigator while he simultaneously underwent his studies at Columbia. Over time, he became known as a leading deception detection expert in the private investigation industry. Lightman earned his Ph.D. in Psychology in just five years.

Soon after, he was hired as an independent contractor by the United States Department of Defense to provide consulting work in the field of deception detection. A little over a year later, Lightman left the Defense Department's deception detection program and founded the Lightman Group.

Based in Washington, D.C., the Lightman Group is an independent firm that assists federal agencies, local police, corporations and private individuals with their most difficult cases through the use of applied psychology. A respected but controversial psychologist, Lightman is an expert at interpreting microexpressions through the facial action coding system and analyzing body language in order to tell when a person is lying. Though often confronted by people's skepticism, he uses any psychological technique he deems necessary to reach the truth, however elaborate or confronting.

Lightman can detect the truth by analyzing a person's face, body, voice and speech. When someone shrugs one shoulder, rotates their hand or raises their lower lip, he knows they're lying. By analyzing facial expressions, Lightman can read feelings - from hidden resentment to sexual attraction to jealousy. But as he well knows, his scientific ability is both a blessing and a curse, as he finds that family and friends will deceive each other as readily as criminals and strangers do.