Lun & Grgicak Honored as 2023 Edison Patent Awardees

Catherine M. Grgicak (Chemistry) and Desmond S. Lun (Computer Science) were named 2023 Edison Patent Awardees, the state’s highest recognition for inventors and innovators, by the Research and Development Council of New Jersey.

Drs. Lun and Grgicak, along with co-inventors Harish Swaminathan and Muriel Medard, are being honored for their 2019 patent, “SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETERMINING AN UNKNOWN CHARACTERISTIC OF A SAMPLE” in the Forensic Science category.

LFTDI investigators awarded Rutgers Camden research funds to couple probabilistic genotyping with forensically relevant NGS pipelines

LFTDI investigators, Drs Catherine M. Grgicak (Chemistry) and Desmond S. Lun (Computer Science) were awarded Rutgers Camden Vice Chancellor for Research funds for project titled: “Coupling probabilistic genotyping with forensically relevant NGS pipelines”, where they will continue developing forensically relevant single-cell strategies for the forensic domain.

M.S. in Chemistry student Madison Mulcahy accepts Scientist position at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. Congratulations!

M.S. Chemistry student Madison Mulcahy accepts a Scientist position at Ortho Clinical Diagnostics after working with LFTDI for three years as a research student. Madison made enormous contributions to the development of single-cell solutions to the forensic DNA mixture problem. Her work was recently showcased as a poster at the International Society of Forensic Genetics conference in Washington DC. We wish Madison all the best!

Dr. Grgicak gives seminar on single-cell forensics at VCU Sept 27, 2022

Dr. Catherine Grgicak will be giving an overview of LFTDI’s recent progress in single-cell forensics at Virginia Commonwealth University’s seminar series. In this invited talk she will discuss how single cell genetics can resolve the reliance on boundaries, assumptions and complex proposition building for simple and complex forensic DNA mixtures. Date: Sept 27, 2022 at 12:30pm. See https://forensicscience.vcu.edu/forensic-science-seminar/

LFTDI Student Madison Mulcahy awarded travel grant to present at ISFG 2022

M.S. Chemistry student, Madison Mulcahy awarded the Dean’s Graduate Travel Grant to present her work on precision forensic DNA analysis at the Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics in Sept 2022. Her presentation titled “Grouped and ungrouped single-cell electropherograms enable precision DNA interpretation: Relevancy and legitimacy of single-cell forensics” will show the benefits of single-cell resolution for forensic DNA mixtures.