Shaping the Future of Forensic Genetics: Claire Glynn on Advancing Science and Empowering Students

Charlotte: Hi, my name is Charlotte Sutter and I’m a PhD student from the Zurich Institute of Forensic Medicine. And I’m here with Claire Glynn, and I’m so glad that we can do this interview today. And we’re just going to start off with a very fundamental question. So how did you choose to work in the field of forensic genetics?

Claire: Um, it’s actually quite an interesting story because when I was about 16 years old, I was born and raised in Ireland, and both my parents are academics working at universities. And I was at that kind of difficult age of, what do I do with the rest of my life, what am I going to do at university? And so on. And my dad brought me an article from the Irish Times newspaper, and it was announcing the first ever bachelor’s degree in forensic science in Ireland. And he said, “You know, I think you’d be great at forensic science.” And I was like, “What is that?” And, I think this was the year that CSI, the TV show came out, the first time that all just kind of started happening. And so, I kind of was like, “Is this really a career?” And he did the research for me and spoke to people at the crime lab in Dublin and the forensic science laboratory there. And he said, “You know, go do this degree, but go do a different degree first so that they can kind of iron out the creases of that one first.” And so, I did, and I went and did a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then immediately went and did that degree afterwards. And from the first of introduction to forensic science and forensic DNA analysis, I was hooked. And so, I really have my dad to thank for putting me in this direction.

Charlotte: Very cool. So, you’ve previously worked at Eurofins Forensic Services. Can you tell me a bit about your work there?

Claire: Sure, so my work at Eurofins, it was called LGC forensics at the time. I actually was allowed to do a six-month internship there during the third year of my bachelor’s degree in forensic science. And I had, you know, hounded those people for… Just take me for six months, I’ll work for free for six months. And eventually they gave in, and they were like, “Okay, this woman won’t leave us alone.” And so, I did, and I went to Oxfordshire in England and worked for them for six months, doing an internship and just being inside the lab, working with the forensic scientists every day. Obviously, as an as an intern, I wasn’t working cases, but I was doing research for them. Well, kind of hearing the chatter, you know, at the lunchtime and around the tea break, I just was glued to it. So immediately I had to return home to finish my final year of university. But the minute that that was finished, and I mean, like the day after the final exams, I moved back and started working full time for them in their biology unit in the homicide and sexual assault team there. So, I was really a forensic biology examiner where, you know, we’d receive in the cases, perform, you know, a strategy of what we will examine for what testing we’ll perform, then perform that in the lab, and then get DNA results from it and so on. And I really just absolutely adored the work there. I just I adored the team. I adored the people. It was just a wonderful environment to work in where I just got to learn so much in quite a short period of time as well, quite quickly, because it was a very high throughput lab where we had a lot of cases coming in all the time. You were never not busy. Ever. So really got some amazing experiences there. And I’m still friends with many of them today. And they even come over here to the US and visit me sometimes, so it’s wonderful.

Charlotte: That sounds very nice and very exciting work. Since then, you have moved to the University of New Haven and you’re now back in academia. Can you tell me a bit about your current research there?

Claire: Sure. So, I joined the University of New Haven ten years ago, so I just celebrated ten years, which is quite funny, because when I came ten years ago, I said, “You know, I’ll come for a year. If I like it, I’ll stay. If I don’t like it, the world is my oyster.” Ten years later, I think I must like it because I’m still here. So, what attracted me to the job the most was being able to kind of develop new methods, research existing methods and make them better, but also novel technologies and kind of pushing the field forward, but then also training the next generation of forensic scientists. And also, at the University of New Haven, we’re very strongly encouraged to still engage in casework and be consultants on casework so that we’re, you know, really at the forefront of the field always, and kind of keeping our own skills up and developing continually. So, I think that’s why ten years later, I’m still there, because it’s such a varied job. With research, specifically in the early kind of part of the first ten years, I was doing a lot of lab based research on developing new methods for body fluid identification, researching a lot about micro RNA analysis.

But whenever the field of FIGG kind of burst into our world, it’s really just taken over completely with FIGG. now. So, I do research with FIGG. as well as casework and teach it. Research wise, we’ve been doing some really interesting research studies looking at the impact of bone marrow transplantation on not just STR profiles, but then SNP profiles, looking at the impact of degradation on biological samples and getting SNP profiles from them for FIGG, and then kind of doing comparisons of the different SNP sequencing technologies. So, it’s really quite varied. I wish I had more time to be back in the lab, though more. But part of the research for me of the kind of evolution of my own style of research, it has moved a lot out of the lab and more into policy development, you know, researching ethics and kind of the more social science parts of it, but also, you know, kind of figuring out best practices and those approaches. I see that as research and scholarship, you know. So, it’s kind of strange how my research focus has evolved so much in ten years.

Charlotte: Very cool. So basically, it sounds like both academia and your non-academia work were very interesting. So can you maybe give a perspective on the differences in terms of academia versus non-academia, what you’ve experienced.

Claire: Yeah. I would say the differences are-and it can be unique to each individual and each place that you work at. The difference with academia versus working in the field, you know, at a crime lab or a forensic lab. In academia, you have a lot more freedom to do the things that you want to do. I know there’s the kind of perception out there of, you know, professors wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe, and we sit in these grand offices with big mahogany desks, and we just drink tea all day. I wish! Being a professor and being in academia, certainly for me, in a way, my schedule is crazy. And it’s 24-hour work. It never stops. You rarely have weekends because you’re constantly trying to catch up, but I would be bored otherwise, so I wouldn’t want it any other way. As I said, you have the freedom to kind of arrange things how you want to arrange them. Except for, like, class schedules and stuff. You know, those are done by the department chair. But I enjoy that freedom of being able to engage in really anything I want. Sometimes it’s too much, but at least I have that ability to do that.

Whereas working in the field, you’re working casework all the time in the crime lab, you’re even, you know, validating new kits in the lab, things like that. There are things that have to get done. And while the work is exceptionally amazing and wonderful and, you know, the paperwork that goes along with it sometimes becomes a bit tedious. But then in academia, nobody likes grading papers and stuff. I suppose working in the field as a forensic DNA analyst or examiner, you know, you don’t have the freedom to do what you want, or you may see an issue with a method or you know, something that you’d like to research and address it, but there’s no time. You have to get to the casework. But that’s why engaging with academia practitioners, engaging with academics is so valuable because they can come up with the questions that need addressing and we can spend the time doing that. So, I really enjoy that kind of collaboration part across the two disciplines, if you will.

Charlotte: That’s very interesting. Thanks for that perspective. So, I did a bit of research, and I saw that you founded a graduate online certificate for FIGG, and I was wondering what sparked the idea to found that program and why one should attend.

Claire: Sure. Well, the whole field of FIGG kind of exploded in 2018 after the Golden State killer, right? We can really attribute it to that. It wasn’t the first ever case, right, that used genealogy by any means, but it’s the one that grabbed the world’s attention. And certainly for me, I remember watching very clearly the press conference with Anne Marie Schubert outside of the Sacramento DA office, saying that they finally arrested the prime suspect. And it kept saying with this new advanced DNA tool. And I’m like, “Which one? Like, what are you talking about?” Because I’m keeping up to date-I have to as an academic because I’m teaching, you know, novel methods and I’m like, “Which one? Which one?” And it was the day after that I read in an article that it was using genetic genealogy, and I literally like, was like, “what?” Because it was my two worlds really colliding, because I had been doing genetic genealogy for years, but not as anything to do with my career. It was completely kind of a hobby and on the side, and I had used genetic genealogy to figure out my own unknown parentage on my paternal side, because I’m adopted, and I didn’t know who my biological father was. I used genetic genealogy and consumer DNA testing years and years before to figure that out, and I’ve been helping other people for many years. Other adoptees, other parents that had given children up for adoption who are now looking for them and have been doing that for quite some time.

So, I developed and kind of self-taught myself the necessary skills and, you know, having knowledge and education and experience in genetics really helped with that. So, after that Golden State Killer announcement, I was like, “I should have thought of that. How did I not think of combining these two?” But I didn’t. Someone else much smarter did, thankfully. And so there I decided that’s going to, you know, completely steer the course of all of my academic focus, my casework focus completely. And as I said to you earlier about, you know, having the freedom to do the things that you want, this is really like one of those areas where I really was given the freedom to do whatever I wanted through my employers, of course. And so, I said, “This is such a novel technique. It’s come out of nowhere. There’s been no, you know, mass training of all DNA analysts and crime labs, you know, how to do this or anything like that. And it just, you know, landed on us.” And I said, “Here’s a really good opportunity where I could provide a mechanism where training could be provided.” And so, I really did a lot of research on, you know, what are the market needs, the market demands which have evolved significantly over the years as well. And I said, you know, a graduate certificate would be most appropriate. This is what I would make the curriculum of, what the breakdown of the courses would be. And make it fully online so that it’s accessible to everyone.

And I kind of really envisioned it would be crime lab people. Law enforcement officers. Legal professionals. And that would be enrolling. So, needs to be asynchronous. So, no live class times, because everybody has different schedules, but also different time zones, all those things. So, we currently just started the fifth cohort. We go back in a cohort kind of system where everyone starts together and ends together, and it’s four courses. So we just started the fifth cohort of it, which I can’t believe we’re in the fifth cohort already. And even when I look at the first year, the first cohort compared to the fifth cohort, the material and the curriculum and the tools and the, you know, even the assignments and things like that have changed so massively over the last five years of it running, because we come up with new tools all the time. The platforms change, and sometimes it drives me nuts because I’ll have just recorded a lecture that’s going to be published next week for the next module, and then something massive will have changed on the GEDmatch side or the Family Tree side, or, you know, something happened at 23andMe that needs to be discussed. So, it’s a heavy lift, I will say, from a professor’s side and a student side, because the content is continually changing and evolving in order to keep up to date with all the great advances that we’ve had in it.

But it is so exciting. And I have my fourth cohort currently finishing and they’re in their fourth course, which is the practicum, in which they’re given each a different mock FIGG case. So, they work it from beginning to end themselves. They’re not real cases. I won’t give real cases, just for maintaining the integrity of real cases. I don’t think it’s appropriate. And so, every day for the last 4 or 5 weeks, I’m getting emails from my students being like, “Is the identity of my unidentified male person X?” And I’m like, “Yes, it is. Well done.” And so that’s really, really exciting to see. So, it keeps growing.

I limit it in terms of the amount of people that are allowed into it. So, I cut it off at 100, which is a lot to begin with anyways. But I see a huge, huge increase in the percentage of students that apply and then enroll and are accepted into the program being a lot of forensic science, a lot of law enforcement people. So, people that are already in their fields of their careers, but they’re upskilling to learn this method, to bring it into their agency already, which is fabulous to see.

Charlotte: That’s so cool. So hopefully many people will see this interview. So, they will all sign up for that certificate. So maybe let’s move on to a bit more fun questions. So first one, what does a typical day look like for you?

Claire: There is no typical day. There really and truly isn’t. And often, I tell my friends, “You won’t believe what I had to do today.” You know, it can be anything from, you know… Think of a typical professor’s day, right? Might be get up, go to class, answer some emails, have one-on-one meetings with some students about their research, teach class in-person or online. Mine has just changed so drastically in recent years and as well as because of the pandemic, I would say as well, but also because of FIGG. I’m also the Co-Executive Director of the Henry Lee Institute of Forensic Science. So that’s a private non-profit business on the grounds of University of New Haven, founded by Doctor Henry Lee. And it’s for training professionals. So, it’s not like an academic kind of place. It’s more for training professionals. So every day things that can occur, and nearly all of them do occur every day are, I’ll be arranging a new training symposium that we’re having coming up or speaking with, you know, a news anchor from one of the news stations about a case that has just been announced, and they want to talk to me about it, about, you know, what this process is.

Or I might be in class with my students, or I’ll be preparing a lecture, or I’ll be recording a lecture or responding to students’ questions in Canvas and on the Q&A board or working a case. You know, I assist a lot of law enforcement agencies across the US and some internationally. And sometimes that can be, “Can you just give us some guidance on where we should go with this” or things like that? And that can be two-hour phone calls, you know, some days. And then other types of assistance might include actually physically working the case with them. And so, we’ll, you know, be online, building family trees and going through the genetic genealogy analysis, having meetings about it. And so, it’s really, really, really varied. And then a lot of conferences and a lot of, you know, guest lectures, invited speaker events, things like that. Last year I did 54 external presentations. So, that was at conferences like this, or other smaller ones, or specific trainings for agencies, or to other universities. Really, it was all over the place. I had a lot of travel in the last year or so.

Charlotte: Wow, that sounds very busy. So, if you had to choose again which scientific field to enter, would it still be forensic genetics or would it be something different?

Claire: 1,000% yes. Always. You know, whenever… I don’t know about you, but I have some friends who, you know, they’re not engaged in their careers. To them, it’s a job. It pays the bills, and I wish forensic science and forensic genetics as a whole paid more of my bills, and it doesn’t, but it feeds my heart, you know. It feeds my energy, makes my blood pump faster, makes me get out of bed in the morning. So, I would say forensic science is really one of those jobs where you’re certainly not in it for the money. Nobody is, because nobody’s getting paid a lot of money. You’re in it because you love it and because you want to give back. You want to help. You want to use your scientific skills and knowledge for good. I really see it as one of those careers that it’s truly a vocation as opposed to a job. And I think that’s important.

Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. So, what kind of advice would you give young forensic geneticists that want to stay in the field and that are also passionate about this research area?

Claire: I mean, the advice I would give them is you’re going to have your ups and downs. You’re going to have, especially in research, right? You know, as a PhD student. I look back at the trauma of my PhD days sometimes. I would do it all again, though. I really would because it builds character, it builds strength. It makes you a better scientist. So, if every bit of research went perfectly and every bit of academic work you ever did went perfectly, it wouldn’t be called research, right? That’s the whole point of it. And any forensic casework, like investigating a case, is research. And if you think about it from that perspective, so you’re going to have highs and lows. You’re going to have ups and downs. Life is going to throw you curveballs, you know, from left right and center and above and underneath. And those aren’t ever going to go away. But how you learn to deal with them and manage them gets a lot better over time. So, in your early career… I certainly thought I was kind of way out of my depth early on in my career. And sometimes I’d be like, “I can’t believe they let me work here. You know, working crimes”. I remember very clearly working my very first crime in the crime lab. And it was, you know, the murder of a man. And I’m like, “They’re leaving me here with this evidence to do this?”

I had that kind of imposter syndrome; I think in the early days. And then you just learn that you’re actually really good at this and you care a lot about it and you’re putting, you know, everything you have into this and your full attention, which is what those cases deserve. Once you kind of realize that that you are skilled in this area because you’ve been well trained, well educated, then you know, it just gets easier as you go along. Your days don’t get any less busy. But, you know, once you start to recognize that you do have skills and that you do know what you’re doing, it’s just a great kind of feeling to have. But in the early days, you’ll struggle. I think that’s what a lot of people feel that I’ve spoken to. And I definitely had it. Even then, when I moved into academia, I had imposter syndrome again in the first few years, but you can kind of pick up the baseball bat and knock it out. Sometimes, you know, it can be others that cause the imposter syndrome or, you know, challenging work environments that can cause that kind of, you know, self-doubt. But sometimes I’m just like, “Well, you know, success is the best revenge on those areas. So just do you be you and power forward and put everything you have into it.”

Charlotte: Thanks! I’ll remember that. So hypothetically, if you got a crime scene stain with which you could do whatever you wanted and just for fun what type of stain would it be? And what kind of analysis would you do?

Claire: Oh lovely. It would be a mixed body fluid. Sperm cells and saliva. Multiple contributors. Single-cell isolation from it and develop Y-STR and SNP profiles individually post single-cell.

Speaker4: Oh, that is very cool that.

Claire: Can we go do it now? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Charlotte: Yeah, yeah. And of course it should work.

Claire: Yes of course.

Charlotte: But it will in our hypothetical scenario.

Claire: Yes. I mean, that’s what I love about this field. I hadn’t been thinking of anything single-cell forever. But I had been thinking, this is going to be a real issue with mixed DNA samples for FIGG and getting SNP profiles. You know, we’re still very, very cautious at all doing anything FIGG-related with a mixed DNA profile, but we’ll only do it on a 50/50 mixture, and if we have the reference of one of those people. And so that’s a kind of straightforward mixture. That’s not a very complex mixture. And I’ve been thinking for quite some time of, you know, how are we going to deal with this in the future? And then I learned recently a lot more about some single cell work that’s happening and have seen some presentations on it. And I’m like, “Go research that thoroughly, perfectly, and then we can all work together.” So, I’m excited to see these new techniques, new developments come down the line. You know, I think as well, from a forensic genetics perspective, if you think back to, you know, as far back as when I was in the crime lab, we just really had STRs. That was it. And that was great. But now, you know, forensic DNA experts… Are you a mixture expert, a probabilistic genotyping expert, a FIGG expert, a phenotyping expert, now single-cell? What about low copy number? There are so many lanes that forensic DNA and forensic genetics have now. Nobody can be an expert in them all. So, having this cross collaboration to see how we can address each other’s problems and questions in those kind of subdisciplines within forensic genetics, is phenomenal.

Charlotte: Nice answer. So finally, this is my first time at ISHI, but I am hoping to attend more often in the future, and I’m looking for good arguments for convincing my PI to allow me to go in following meetings. So, can you maybe share your favorite thing about ISHI?

Claire: I would say the people. So, first of all, the organizing committee, I just adore them. I served a term on the Advisory Board for ISHI, and just getting to know the team from Promega who do all of it, and they’re just phenomenal individuals. They really care about the field. They really care about bringing knowledge and sharing knowledge broadly to everyone in our field. And they always make the events very exciting and, you know, very collaborative and friendly. You know, there’s never any kind of hostility at these where people just want to argue all the time. Sometimes there’s a little bit, but that’s okay. But as well, it’s about, you know, bringing novel ideas, novel topics, and kind of, I suppose, pushing the field forward, which is what we all want all the time. And you’re a PhD student. You know, whenever I’m asked by my own students, “What’s the difference between a master’s and a PhD? I’m like, master is mastering and PhD is pushing a field forward.” And that’s what conferences like this do because, we will attend presentations and someone will be presenting on something that will make me think of an idea, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to go research that now. I’ll maybe do a collaboration with that person.” And I always come away from here with so many collaborations, which is just fantastic. So, this is one of the friendliest collaborative environments of any of the conferences I attend. So, there’s your justification.

Charlotte: That’s that sounds amazing. So, thank you very much for taking the time. And it was a pleasure meeting you. Yeah, it was.

Claire: Yeah, it was a pleasure meeting you too. And best of luck with your PhD. It’s going to be amazing.