ANZPAA NIFS Best Paper Award Recipients - Forensic Biology

On Thursday 22 December 2022, A/Chief Executive, Sash Tomson met with the award recipients to congratulate them on their success in delivering world-class forensic services to the Western Australian community. The awards from ANZPAA-NIFS recognises the significance of the research conducted at PathWest Forensic Biology to the wider forensic science community in improving the delivery of forensic DNA services.

The awards also validate the high quality of work performed by the PathWest Forensic Biology Department as the sole state forensic DNA service provider, as well as the department’s ongoing commitment to investigate new methods to enhance laboratory capabilities and quality assurance standards that will assist WA Police in keeping the WA community safe.

‘The efficient separation of sperm cells from epithelial cells is a key factor in the ability to recover a single source DNA profile of the sperm cell donor. Separation is most often achieved through the use of a differential separation method, of which there are many variations used across the forensic community. While each iteration of an “improved” differential separation method attempts to address key limitations and challenges of the differential separation process, at present studies have limited success in overcoming intra-operator variability and loss of sperm cells during the separation process.

In this paper, the introduction of the i-sep^® DL filter column into the differential separation process was evaluated. The results showed that the i-sep^® DL method markedly improved sensitivity, repeatability, reproducibility and efficiency of sperm DNA capture and recovery from forensic sexual assault samples. The notable increased capacity of sperm fraction capture thereby increases the probability of obtaining a probative male profile from these evidentiary type samples. The paper introduces a cost-effective, highly efficient method with markedly increased sperm capture that can be readily introduced into an operational laboratory.’

‘A lack of consistent terminology with regards to "error" in forensic science has been identified as a fundamental problem to forensic science providing transparent and accurate communication on error rates in the forensic process.

Developing a common language for quality issues in forensic science is a key strategy towards re-evaluating our understanding of "error" not only within the field of forensic science, but also with investigators, the courts and the wider public.

As technologies improve and sharing of forensic information across jurisdictions increase, a common language will assist us in providing context to investigators and courts on the weighting of the forensic information.

Additionally, being able to share information on quality issues across agencies will enable us to recognise trends and identify opportunities for research and development to support the continuous improvement of the field of forensic science.

Internationally, very few forensic agencies provide information on their quality issues publicly. By championing this research, PathWest is leading the way, both in WA and Australia, towards transparent and accountable forensic service provision to support the disruption, prevention and solving of crime in the community.’