Summer Assignment (NJIT FSI Summer Jumpstart)

Hairs Lab - Glow

In my learning of forensics, I had a lesson that covers the investigation of hairs. In this lesson, a general overview was given that hairs/fibers are the most common findings in crime scene investigations and can reveal their characteristics when observed. To conduct this lab, I used these different types of my own body hair: scalp hair, arm hair, and eyebrow hair, which I later observed under the microscope in 10X magnification. Through the photos I have taken, it can be seen that the medulla, cortex, and color are present. To cover the question of how we could discover if the hair found in a crime scene is animal or human hair, I did a comparison of a domesticated rabbit hair and human hair, which show very distinct differences. For this lab, careful observations were made as well as measurements. The difficult part of this lab, however, was the management of the microscope as I did find some challenges in finding my specimen under different magnifications, taking up my lab time. However, this lab has given me an understanding of how hair is identified through microscopic observations, giving information about the crime scene investigation process.

DNA Lab - Grow

In my learning of forensics, I was introduced to the topic of observing DNA. When DNA is found in crime scene investigations, questioned and known documents come into the picture of identifying DNA. Using the STR Profile Worksheet and the electropherograms, I was tasked to determine how many people were present in the 6 questioned samples (B1 - B6). Some were single-source samples as others were mixtures. We were also tasked to determine the major and minor contributors to the samples. This lab required very careful thinking and observation. While I did have an understanding of finding major and minor contributors, mistakes were made in which were caused by misidentifications. This lab, however, has developed my skill in analyzing graphs and given me an understanding in DNA identification done in forensics.