The Learning Lab

Forensic DNA analysts study biological evidence — blood, semen, saliva, hair roots, skin cells left by touch, and bone or teeth from degraded remains. They ask three questions: Is there DNA? Whose is it? And how rare would that profile be if it came from someone else?

Linking suspects or victims to evidence from a scene

Latent print examiners study friction-ridge detail left on surfaces. They compare the arrangement of ridges and their minutiae — ridge endings, bifurcations, and dots — between an unknown print and a known impression.

Linking suspects to scenes and recovered objects

Forensic toxicologists study blood, urine, tissue, and sometimes hair or vitreous fluid. They screen broadly for classes of compounds, then confirm and quantify any substance found, and interpret the result against what is known about the drug's behavior in the body.

Determining whether drugs or poisons contributed to death

Forensic pathologists study the body — externally and internally — together with wounds, disease, toxicology, and the scene context. They correlate what they find with medical history and police investigation to reach an opinion about how death occurred.

Determining cause and manner of sudden, unexpected, or violent deaths

Forensic anthropologists study skeletal remains — their shape, density, growth markers, and break patterns. They also study taphonomy, the processes that alter remains after death, to distinguish injury from postmortem damage.

Identifying unknown human remains

Forensic entomologists study the insects colonizing a body — blowflies, beetles, and others — identifying species and developmental stage, and reading the environment's temperature history to estimate how long colonization has been underway.

Estimating a minimum time since death when bodies are badly decomposed

Bloodstain pattern analysts study the geometry and distribution of stains at a scene, relating them to the forces that created them. They classify patterns and, where geometry allows, estimate where an impact occurred.

Reconstructing the sequence and position of events at a scene

Firearms and toolmark examiners study fired bullets, cartridge cases, and the operating condition of firearms, plus toolmarks left by pry bars, bolt cutters, and other implements. They compare marks produced by a suspect item to those recovered as evidence.

Linking fired bullets and casings to a specific firearm

Digital forensic examiners study file systems, memory, network traffic, and the artifacts left by applications and operating systems. They ask what was on a device, what was done with it, when, and sometimes by whom.

Recovering deleted or hidden data in criminal investigations

Trace analysts study microscopic and chemical properties of recovered materials — the color and shape of a fiber, the refractive index of glass, the elemental composition of paint — and compare them to known sources.

Linking a suspect or victim to a scene through transferred material

Document examiners study writing features, ink and paper composition, indented impressions, watermarks, printing processes, and signs of erasure or alteration. They compare questioned material to known genuine samples.

Authenticating signatures on wills, contracts, and checks

Crime scene investigators study the scene itself — its layout, the location and relationship of items, and the traces left behind. They document and collect evidence so that specialists can analyze it later without the scene still being present.

Preserving physical evidence for later analysis

Forensic chemists study the chemical composition and physical properties of evidence — what a substance is, how much is present, and how a questioned sample compares to a known one.

Identifying accelerants in suspected arson

Forensic psychologists study behavior, cognition, and mental state as they bear on legal questions — examining assessment results, interview records, and research on memory and decision-making.

Assessing competency to stand trial and mental state at offense

Forensic odontologists study dental records, tooth morphology, restorations, and dental aging, and may compare images of bite marks to dental casts of a suspected source.

Identifying decomposed, burned, or fragmentary remains through dental records

Audio and video forensic analysts study recordings — their visual and acoustic content, their metadata, and any signs of tampering — and compare questioned recordings to known samples such as a voice exemplar.

Clarifying surveillance and body-camera footage

Forensic engineers study the failed object or structure itself — fractures, deformation, corrosion, and wear — along with design documents, maintenance records, and the conditions leading to failure, to reconstruct what happened mechanically.

Investigating structural collapses and building failures