FORENSIC CHEMISTRY & MATERIALS LAB
STOTESBURY RESEARCH GROUP
Our research group blends forensic and analytical chemistry with materials science. From understanding how common forensic evidence degrades and persists in the environment to developing new biomaterials and everything in between, we have been involved with many interesting and fun scientific research. Want more? Check out our publications here.
Check out a few of our general themes below:
RESERACH THEMES
FORENSIC MATERIALS: blood & other tissue simulants. Standard reference materials are critical in any analytical field, and forensic science is no exception. In forensic science, standard reference materials are required in both research and training. For example, they can be used to develop fundamental methods to understand the formation, deposition and degradation of forensic evidence. For studies that involve human tissue, when human and/or animal sources cannot be used for biohazardous, ethical and/or institutional reasons, synthetic alternatives are sought. We have developed a body of research on a suite of blood and other tissue simulants; these materials are quite different than those created for clinical purposes. In forensic scenarios, these materials must meet physical, chemical and biological requirements under ex-vivo conditions, and across a range of environmental conditions experienced in crime scene investigation. For the past decade or so myself and other members of the FCML have explored how natural, semi-synthetic and synthetic soft materials can be designed to form bloodstains, react with common chemical enhancement reagents, generate DNA profiles post-collection and degrade similar to whole blood in forensic scenarios. Two systems in particular with different polymer bases (silicon sol-gel & alginate hydrogels) have shown significant promise for forensic blood substitute (FBS) development. Beyond FBSs we are now exploring how alginate hydrogel technology can be developed and applied in forensic science.
FORENSIC CHEMISTRY: aging evidence & other analytical methods. In forensic science, biological materials are often collected and analyzed for source identification (e.g. linking DNA extracted from collected evidence to an individual). The how (mechanistic) and when (time since deposition (TSD), post mortem interval (PMI)) is difficult to determine, yet can provide critical medico-legal information to these investigations. We have joined many interesting research groups on the quest for understanding time dependent biomarkers useful for TSD and/or PMI. We implement a holistic approach that often use untargeted methods to analyze many features of degrading evidence. We primarily use spectroscopy and spectrometry-based techniques to look at oxidation and degradation of biomolecules. Most of our experiments include environmental considerations, particularly degradation across temperature and humidity extremes so that we can develop realistic aging models that can be applied to many real-world scenarios. In this research we are exploring how forensic chemistry, applied genetics, applied statistics and high-resolution mass spectrometry can all contribute to TSD and PMI estimations.
FORENSIC SCIENCE: practitioner-centric research. The goal here is to provide applied scientific research useful to the criminal justice system. I dedicate a portion of my research group's time and focus on answering applied research questions that can be useful to forensic casework. For example, we study whole blood and blood simulant rheology to inform bloodstain formation mechanics. We conduct research in blood stain and blood stain pattern characteristics (size, shape and distribution) that has direct implications to crime scene investigation casework. We have been involved in research
that has created open-source resources for BPA, published methods to create forensic devices that are being adopted by other researchers, and have published a high-speed video set that can be used by BPA practitioners explaining stain formation in snow and ice conditions.
WATCH THE SPACE!
Wait, there's more!?! ... We're really just here to do fun science and stay curious! Stay tuned for new developments and collaborations in biomaterials, biosensors and more!
DATA
FUNDING
Thank you: We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) DG, DAS, ECR-Lauch, Discovery Horizons & RTI programs, as well as the New Frontiers in Research Fund Exploration program.
