AFDAA 2021 Summer Meeting

The Association of Forensic DNA Analysts and Administrators (AFDAA), RTI International, and NIJ’s Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE) partnered to host the AFDAA summer meeting virtually on July 28th and 29th, 2021. This virtual conference allowed the continued dissemination…

Just the Biology and DNA Portfolio

In episode four of our 2021 NIJ R&D and Beyond mini season, Just Science sat down with Tracey Johnson, a physical scientist and program manager in the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at NIJ, to discuss the NIJ Biology and DNA…

2021 NIJ Forensic Science R&D Symposium

Overview The Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE) assisted the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in hosting the annual NIJ Forensic Science Research and Development (R&D) Symposium on February 16, 2021 from 10:00 AM ET to 5:40 PM ET. NIJ…

Stability and Persistence of Touch DNA for Forensic Analysis

This webinar originally occurred on March 11th, 2021 Duration: 1 hour Touch DNA evidence (i.e. the low quantities of DNA that can be left behind when someone touches an object) is of increasing importance in criminal investigations. However, many important…

Sexual Assault Response Reform Fact Sheets

The Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCoE) is leading an effort to organize and transfer knowledge and best practices of sexual assault response to the criminal justice community. Whether through webinars, podcast episodes, reports, or conferences, the FTCoE is working…

Utility of Microbes in Forensic Science

This webinar originally occurred on Wednesday, January 20th, 2021 Duration: 1 hour The presenter discussed the definition of forensic microbiology, a timeline of when it first became popular, and how it differs from molecular epidemiology. The webinar then covered differences…

Emerging Methods for Body Fluid Analysis

This webinar originally occurred on Thursday, January 14th, 2021 Duration: 1.5 hours The Forensic Technology Center of Excellence hosted a panel of subject matter experts to discuss emerging methods for body fluid analysis. This webinar is broken up into three…

An Automated Single Cell Separation Technique to Improve Mixture Deconvolution

This webinar originally occurred on Thursday, November 12th, 2020 Duration: 1 hour Although the interpretation of mixed DNA samples is commonplace in forensic analyses, complex samples often present interpretational challenges. These complexities are introduced through a variety of environmental, biological,…

Success Story: Advancing Mixture Interpretation Analysis with NOCIt

NIJ and Rutgers University Report Date September 2020 Impact “One could argue that a better approach than opting for the minimum number of contributors to a mixture might be to determine the number of contributors best supported by the data.”…

Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists official banner

2020 SWAFS Virtual Conference

This virtual conference originally occurred on October 5th, 6th, and 8th, 2020 In October 2020, the FTCoE helped the Southwestern Association of Forensic Scientists (SWAFS) host their first virtual conference. This event, which saw over 1,400 unique attendees across three…