Forensic Technology Center of Excellence

These presentations highlight specific case studies from a pathologist’s perspective. Jamie Downs, M.D., discussed several topics, including best practices for identifying child abuse and the difference between manner of death and cause of death.

Former Major League Baseball player Mel Hall is known for many things, but his athletic career is shadowed by a severe crime: preying on underage girls. In 2009, Hall was convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. In this presentation, survivor Chaz discussed her personal story and the methods Hall used to manipulate her family into trusting him.

Former Major League Baseball player Mel Hall is known for many things, but his athletic career is shadowed by a severe crime: preying on underage girls. In 2009, Hall was convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. In this presentation, survivor Chaz discussed her personal story and the methods Hall used to manipulate her family into trusting him.

Former Major League Baseball player Mel Hall is known for many things, but his athletic career is shadowed by a severe crime: preying on underage girls. In 2009, Hall was convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. In this presentation, survivor Chaz discussed her personal story and the methods Hall used to manipulate her family into trusting him.

Forensic science research and development plays a key role in the advancement of the practice of forensic science, as noted by the 2009 National Academies of Science report “Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the United States: A Path Forward.”

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on April 9, 2019.

This webinar will discuss the challenges and opportunities regarding the implementation of the NIBIN program. The NIBIN program has the potential to find links in cases involving firearms that can quickly assist in an investigation.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on January 24, 2019.

This webinar will provide an overview of the field of digital forensics for the laboratory administrator. This is the second webinar in the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on January 31, 2019.

The webinar will introduce those laboratory managers with fire debris analysis sections to the nuances of fire debris analysis. This is the third webinar in the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on February 7, 2019.
 

This course serves as an overview of the trace evidence discipline for the crime laboratory administration. This is the fourth webinar in the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on February 14, 2019.

This course explains transitioning from 17025:2005 to 17025:2017 and the lessons Learned. This is the fifth webinar in the ASCLD Train the Director Webinar Series.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on February 21, 2019.

SWGDAM recently issued recommendations on genotyping results reported as likelihood ratios, designed to promote consistency among laboratories. Members of the committee will discuss the recommendations and their foundations.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 18, 22018.

This webinar will demonstrate the use of the open source 3D Slicer software platform (https://www.slicer.org/) for visualizing 3D medical imaging datasets and collecting quantitative data from those images, including linear/angular, landmark-based, and volumetric data.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 28, 2020.

In the third webinar, participants will learn about the image data included in the New Mexico Decedent Image Database, including how to open and view an image series, the different viewing functions, and how to access detailed information about the images.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 21, 2020. 
 

Based on the review of various forms of STR typing results and factors that impact the presence or condition of DNA on evidence, instructors in this installment of Probabilistic Genotyping of Evidentiary DNA Typing Results lay a foundation for the interpretation of forensic DNA typing results. The session will begin with background information on forensic DNA analysis, including terminology and mechanisms, to help all participants comprehend the material covered in this series.

This first webinar is an introduction to NMDID. Attendees will learn about the history of the database and the team that developed it. There will be a tour of the website, including data use agreement, “how to use” videos, descriptions of basic data types, and an introduction to the data dictionary.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 7, 2020. 

This webinar will provide an evaluation of the DEPArray™, a system that enables the identification, separation, and recovery of single cells or groups of cells from heterogeneous mixtures. The workflow described in this webinar will highlight the impact this instrument, with standard forensic processes, will have on processing sexual assault evidence and improving the success of single cell analyses.

Many working with genomic DNA can afford to lose large portions of it during its extraction without negatively impacting downstream analysis.  However, with work targeting highly degraded DNA sources, retention of every molecule can be key to successful analyses.   This webinar addressed the insufficient documentation of absolute efficiencies of extraction methods and the nature of DNA loss associated with the study of low copy number and degraded DNA samples.

This webinar introduced the importance of network forensics, which included capturing network traffic and reconstructing digital artifacts. Presenters discussed big data challenges, open-source tools, and the new toolkit FileTSAR.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 12, 2020.

This webinar focused on the use of PACE™, a method developed by Syracuse University, to perform artifact management and probabilistically predict the number of contributors (NOC) in forensic DNA samples. This is performed using a combination of biological modeling and machine learning, permitting high accuracy NOC calls (greater than 90%) of complex mixtures. It does so rapidly (seconds to minutes) without the need for high performance computing resources.

This webinar discussed intact low explosives analysis with a focus on microscopical methods. It covered terminology for explosives, the rationale of low explosives analysis for most crime laboratories, six categories of low explosives, and examples of three analyses using microscopical methods.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on July 16, 2020.

This webinar highlighted the results of a full developmental validation of a method that estimates the A Posteriori Probability (APP) of the number of contributors in a DNA sample(NOC), and demonstrated that estimating the APP based on peak heights outperforms methods that rely on binary determinations alone. This presentation focused on including the true NOC in Likelihood Ratio interpretations and on repeatability.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on July 14, 2020.

This webinar covered management challenges unique to a digital forensics unit in a laboratory and offer practical solutions to overcome these challenges.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on July 1, 2020.
 

Residential structure fires are predominantly fueled by synthetic contents and commonly become ventilation-limited.  Therefore accounting for the impact of ventilation on fire is important. Examining flow paths within the structure can aide in fire pattern analysis.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on June 10, 2020. 

Using a typical OEM paint system, the PDQ Maintenance Team will walk through the best practices to efficiently use the database and spectral libraries to identify the most likely source of an unknown paint system. Details gathered from this process include manufacturing plant, year range, and models.

This webinar discussed the role of emergent technologies for both separation and detection techniques employed in chromatographic systems to increase selectivity for the identification of emerging drugs. Techniques include supercritical fluid chromatography, multi-dimensional liquid chromatography, multi-modal liquid chromatography, nano liquid chromatography, vacuum ultraviolet detection, and cold electron ionization mass spectrometry.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on March 19, 2020.