Most forensic scientists who become supervisors say the same thing when they look back: the skills that earned the promotion were not the skills the role required. They found that out on their own, after the fact. Nobody told them it was coming.
That pattern, one of the most consistent in forensic lab leadership and one of the least discussed, is a through-line in the May 2026 ISHI Report.
The Forensic Leadership Alliance, Dr. Pam Marshall, Julie Sikorsky, Ray Wickenheiser, and John Collins, recorded a roundtable conversation for the podcast Crime in the Courtroom that captures this problem plainly. John Collins works with leaders navigating the moment the new role stops feeling like an extension of the old one. His framing: “You’re changing professions. You’re not just going into another office. You are going into management.” Their article this month follows that conversation, and it leads directly into the FLA’s full-day workshop at ISHI 37 on Monday, October 26. The workshop takes succession planning as its organizing question, not as an HR exercise, but as a question about whether forensic labs are building cultures where leadership is something scientists actually want to pursue.
The human dimension runs through this issue in a different register in “Keeping Humans in the Loop Is Not Enough.” Dr. Niki Osborne of The New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science opens by acknowledging she uses AI tools every day and is watching herself be changed by them. Her concern is not AI adoption. It is something more specific: whether the humans nominally overseeing AI outputs retain the expertise to understand, challenge, and take responsibility for what those tools produce. In forensic science, where expert opinion must be capable of scrutiny in court, that question carries a different weight than it does in most fields. Her piece names four conversations every forensic laboratory should be having right now, before AI becomes part of routine casework and the patterns get harder to unwind.
In 1996, investigators made horrific discoveries at Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana. Nearly three decades later, a coroner’s mission to identify the victims continues. “Fox Hollow Murders: Victim Identification Effort” follows that work, and it is a reminder that some cases are not measured in caseload timelines.
The STRmix team shares what is coming for FaSTR™ DNA, including major upgrades to the expert witness workflow. For labs currently planning their probabilistic genotyping infrastructure, the direction is worth knowing now.
“The Science Led Them Here: Meet the 2026 ISHI Student Ambassadors” introduces Irina Badell Garcia, Simone Yang, Elizabeth Kowalczyk, Daniel Arend, and Mia Gale. Each arrived in forensic science from a different starting point. Each will be at ISHI 37 in Providence this October.
The ISHI On-Demand library also gets an update this issue. Two new modules are now available: Expert Witness Testimony Skills for Forensic DNA Analysts and Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG): Frameworks, Case Triage, and Responsible Implementation join the Probabilistic Genotyping, DNA Mixtures, and Likelihood Ratios module. All are available now.
The oral and interesting case abstract deadline for ISHI 37 is June 7. If something in this issue reflects a problem your laboratory has worked through, an identification case that has stayed with you, or a question the field has not fully answered, that is a reasonable starting point.
The May 2026 ISHI Report is available now.