• Question: Do you do any work related to forensic science? If so is it interesting?

    Asked by to Claire, Ian, Sergey, Vicky, Zena on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Vicky Schneider

      Vicky Schneider answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      nope, but I think it is a very interesting area…one of my friends years ago had to put carcasses around and collect the insects that he found so that it could be possible to define according to which insect you find in a crime scene the timings of the incident.

    • Photo: Zena Hira

      Zena Hira answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      I have done computer forensics which is investigation of crime related to computers (cyber crime) . This can be hacking, child pornography, fraud, espionage, cyberstalking, murder and rape.

      I haven’t done anything biologically related though

    • Photo: Ian Simpson

      Ian Simpson answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I haven’t, but colleagues were involved in a criminal case where they used statistics to match the soil on the boot of a murder suspect to the crime scene.

      In essence every bit of soil is unique and several countries have databases of soil composition for forensics (and agricultural reasons). The question for the case was how likely it was that the soil came from one of a number of locations based on it’s known composition.

    • Photo: Claire Shooter

      Claire Shooter answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I don’t but some of the DNA analysis techniques I use are used in forensic science. The new sequencing technology I use is really useful for finding all the different DNA in, for example, blood samples that may be a mix of DNA from both the victim and the person who attacked them, and you know, might have DNA from a stray dog who licked it mixed in. In the old days a sample like this would be useless, but with new technology you can just bung the whole lot in a sequencer, seperate it out computationally by which bits fit together and end up with a DNA profile from both the victim and the attacker (and the dog if you’re really interested).
      Some scientists are currently trying to make a way of working out what a person looks like based on a DNA sample, but they are a long way off making it useful yet. You can read about it here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129613.600-genetic-mugshot-recreates-faces-from-nothing-but-dna.html
      So, I don’t do any but I think it’s very interesting!

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