Dear Mentor: How Can Leaders Get Staff On Board with Changes?
She’s not trying to undermine the change. She doesn’t realize she’s resisting it. That’s not a generous reading of a difficult team dynamic. It’s what the behavioral science behind change actually shows. When someone has a natural propensity toward negative emotion, they tend to experience change as loss. They grieve it, or they fear it, […]
A Free Training for Kinship Analysis Is Now Available. Here’s What’s in It.
Kinship analysis occupies a different space than most DNA casework. Standard forensic interpretation relies on direct comparisons — a known profile measured against an unknown. Kinship analysis asks a different question: given the DNA in front of you, what is the statistical support for a biological relationship between these individuals? That distinction matters for how […]
What 15 Skeletons from a 17th-Century Warship Reveal About Modern Forensic DNA
The warship Vasa sank in Stockholm harbor in 1628, traveling just over 1,300 meters before it went down. When salvage crews raised it in 1961, they recovered skeletal remains along with it — clothing, artifacts, and bones that had spent 333 years submerged, then been excavated, reburied in soil, and in some cases stored in […]
Speeding Up Cannabis DNA Analysis: A GWU Student Takes on the Drug Lab Backlog
Most forensic drug labs work with chemistry. GC-MS is the gold standard, and it does what it’s supposed to do — but it’s slow, and the backlogs are real. Rory Conn, a graduate student in forensic molecular biology at George Washington University, set out to see whether DNA could help. Her research builds on a […]
When the Mass ID Plan Needed a Real Test, This Forensic Lab Reached for Dice
Most forensic laboratories have a mass identification plan. Far fewer have a reliable way to test it — one that doesn’t require pulling equipment off-site, coordinating logistics for a full deployment exercise, or halting casework to run a simulation. For the DNA unit at Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, that gap became the problem worth […]
This Week in Forensic Science
No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door! Toronto Police Service Leverages Othram’s Forensic Sequencing Platform in a 2008 Sexual Assault Investigation […]
Dear Mentor: The Opportunity is Theirs First
A forensic lab manager sent the FLA mentors a question that comes up in most labs within the first year of someone stepping into management: when do you delegate a task to your team, and when is it better to handle it yourself? Some leaders may approach it as a time-management problem. Julie Sikorsky approaches […]
This Week in Forensic Science
No one has hours to scour the papers to keep up with the latest news, so we’ve curated the top news stories in the field of Forensic Science for this week. Here’s what you need to know to get out the door! NYC’s Annual Missing Persons Day Aims to Find Answers for Loved Ones (CBSNews – […]
Why Age Estimation Models Need to Work for Everyone: A Q&A with ISHI Student Ambassador Maria Flores
Most age estimation models in forensic DNA were built on a linear assumption: that methylation changes at a predictable, constant rate across the lifespan. Maria Flores, a PhD candidate at UCLA, didn’t think that was right. Her research develops a non-linear model for age estimation using DNA methylation data — an approach she argues better […]