Just Science

In episode three of the forensic advancement season, Just Science interviews Dr. Paul Speaker from West Virginia University about THE JURISDICTIONAL RETURN ON investment for DNA Databases. With the help of FORESIGHT crime labs can have not only an emotional argument but also an economical argument for testing all sexual assault kits. Just Science explores questions in this episode such as, should...

In episode two of the forensic advancement season, Just Science interviews Dr. Cecelia Crouse, formally the Crime Laboratory Director for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, about the 2009 national academies report. The conversation also dives into Dr. Crouses’ experience, leadership and the differences between academic and laboratory science. This month the FTCoE will be releasing a report wr...

The Forensic Advancement season of Just Science will focus on many areas that challenge forensic leadership within the community. The majority of these interviews were recorded at the 2018 ASCLD Annual Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia. If you have an interesting case and would like to be a guest on our next season, recorded at the 2019 ASCLD symposium, please visit our podcast landing page at Forensi...

In the fourth episode of our medicolegal death investigation special release season, Just Science interviews John Fudenberg, the Coroner for Clark County, where he discusses the tragic events of the 2017 concert shooting in Las Vegas, and the aftermath that followed.   This episode will focus on lessons learned and how other coroner offices can prepare now for unforeseen incidents. John Fudenberg...

In the third episode of our medicolegal death investigation special release season, Just Science interviews Bobbi Jo O’neal, the Chief Deputy Coroner of Charleston, South Carolina, who discusses the unique skills that forensic nurses can provide as coroners. Listen along as we discuss how Charleston County has learned to deal with mass fatality scenes and infant deaths by creating multidisciplinar...

In the second episode of our medicolegal death investigation special release season, Just Science interviews John Fudenberg, the Coroner for Clark County, Nevada. Listen along as Just Science explores commonalities and differences between the coroner and medical examiner systems to highlight pervading issues and possible improvements within the MDI community. This season is funded by the National...

In the first episode of our medicolegal death investigation special release season, Just Science interviews Kelly Keyes, the supervising deputy coroner of Orange County, California to give an overview about the coroners and medical examiners professions and to identify key topics for discussion in the fields today. Listen along as our host Dr John Morgan, and our guest co-host Dr. Jeri Ropero-Mill...

In the sixth episode of the 2018 R&D Season, Just Science speaks with Dr. Michael Edge of UC Davis about his research with record linkage of CODIS profiles with SNP genotypes. Can you tell if a set of CODIS markers and a set of SNP genotypes match the same person? Just science discusses with Doc the possibilities of linkages between CODIS and SNPs databases for identity and familial matching, and...

In the fifth episode of our 2018 NIJ R&D Season, Just Science speaks with Dr. Jamie Wieland and Dr. Christopher Mulligan of Illinois State University about assessing the impact of implementing portable mass spectrometers for on-site drug evidence processing. Listen along as Just Science explores cross-disciplinary research to determine the analytical, legal, and fiscal impacts of adopting drug scr...

In episode four of the 2018 NIJ R&D Season, Just Science speaks with Dr. Shamsi Berry, from the University of Mississippi Medical Center, about her research with standardizing a large-scale, whole-body CT image database. In 2010 the Office of the Medical Investigator for New Mexico was awarded an NIJ grant where they did high-resolution whole-body CT scans.  Fast forward six years later where anot...

In the third episode of the 2018 NIJ R&D Season, Just Science speaks with Dr. David Carter, Director and Associate Professor of Forensic Sciences at Chaminade University of Honolulu, about his research, “Evaluating the Skin Microbiome as Trace Evidence on Common Surface Types.” Microbiome trace evidence samples can be tracked back to individuals with high accuracy and used to narrow pools of suspe...

In the second episode of our new R&D Season, Just Science host Dr. John Morgan speaks with human population geneticist Dr. Kenneth Kid, Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Senior Research Scientist with 44 years under his belt at Yale University. With the advent of massively parallel sequencing, microhaplotypes have become a valuable new type of DNA marker for use in forensics. These markers have g...

In the first episode of our new R&D Season, Just Science host Dr. John Morgan speaks with Dr. Bruce Budowle, the Executive Director of the Institute of Applied Genetics and Professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. Did you know that if you swab a 1cm square area of skin you'll recover up to ten thousand bacterial cells? Microbiome profiling for forensic identi...

Just So You Know: In Remembrance of Dr. Cantu This Just So You Know episode was produced in remembrance of Dr. Antonio Cantu who passed away Friday, June 29, 2018. "Dr. Cantu worked as a Forensic Scientist for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and served as Chief Scientist for the Forensic Service...

In episode twelve of our Drugs Season, Just Science speaks to Dr. Paul Speaker, from West Virginia University, about the economic burden our justice system has from opioid deaths. They are estimating that the crime labs alone are spending around 270 milions dollars a year on the opioid crisis. Laboratory budgets are not growing fast enough to handle this drain on resources. Listen along as Just Sc...

In episode eleven of our Drugs Season, Just Science visits Atlanta for the 45th Annual ASCLD symposium to visit with Dr. Barry Logan, Sr. Vice President of Forensic Science Initiatives and Chief of Forensic Toxicology at National Medical Services, to discuss the convergence of drivers of the national opioid epidemic. Follow along to learn what's in these novel compounds, and why it matters to illi...

In episode ten of our Drugs Season, Just Science visits Atlanta for the 45th Annual ASCLD symposium to talk with the Orange County, California Laboratory Director, and chair of the ASCLD Opioid Taskforce Committee, Bruce Houlihan. Listen along as John and Bruce tackle the nation's most complex drug war front on the topic of seized drugs in labs, and why post-mortem findings, research, and collabor...

In episode Nine of our Drugs Season, Just Science discusses the Opioid Epidemic with RTI International's Dr. Gary Zarkin and Dr. Jeri Ropero-Miller. Solving the United State's Opioid Epidemic that's riddled with unknowns and inconsistencies starts with a holistic understanding of the pervading issues. It's not just the prevention and treatment associated with novel psychoactive substances, but sur...

In episode eight of our Drugs Season, Just Science discusses research in the area of e-cigarettes with Dr. Michelle Peace. Vaping, the act of inhaling vapor from e-liquid through a vaporizer, or also known as an e-cigarette, has gained popularity in recent years. The first half of the episode was recorded over a year ago. During the second half Dr. Peace will give us an update on where her researc...

How do career trajectories differ for Women in Forensics? It’s not just about showcasing academic rigor, producing great research, and chasing grants. This Just So You Know, we speak with Dr. Campo of FIU and touch on creating women leaders in science, academia, STEM, and forensics, and finding a balance between children and careers, while not sacrificing living other parts of life. This episode o...

In episode seven of our Drugs Season, Just Science discusses with Dr. Nadja Schreiber Compo, an associate professor at Florida International University, her research on the effects of alcohol on witnesses' and victims' memory for events and faces. Victims and witnesses are discredited for being intoxicated, and may encounter obstacles as a result, but there is no science at this point that suggest...

In episode six of our Drugs Season, Just Science uses the 30-year career of Randy Hanzlick of the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office in Atlanta to explore the field of forensic pathology. Nerd out with Dr. John Morgan and Dr. Hanzlick as they discuss everything you'd want to know about medicolegal death investigation, from the history of forensic pathology, board certifications and standards,...

In episode five of our Drugs Season, Just Science interviews Jennifer Knudsen, Colorado's Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutor, and Glenn Davis, the Highway Safety Manager for the Colorado Department of Transportation. Listen along as Colorado's recreational marijuana legalization traffic experts discuss the law and operations of the existence of recreational marijuana and its impact on the transpor...

In episode four of our Drugs Season, Just Science interviews Dr. Carl Wolf, from the Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University to discuss his NIJ funded research, titled "Liver Doesn't DIE, or at least its Enzymes, and Other Useful Information Discovered while Evaluating the Effect of Sample Preparation Techniques on Matrix Effects and Absolute Recovery of Opiates in Liver Tissue using U...

In episode three of the Drugs Season, Just Science interviews Alex Krotulski, a research scientist, and Amanda Mohr, a forensic scientist 2, at the Center for Forensic Science Research and education. Both discuss their NIJ funded research titled Evaluating Trends in Novel Psychoactive Substances Using a Sentinel Population of Electronic Dance Music Festival Attendees. Stay tuned as we answer some...