For release: March 4, 2005

Contacts: 
David Baldwin, (515) 294-2069
Steve Karsjen, (515) 294-5643

MIDWEST FORENSICS RESOURCE CENTER
TO RECEIVE $1.5 MILLION

AMES, Iowa – U.S. Senator Tom Harkin has announced $1.5 million in federal funding for the Midwest Forensics Resource Center at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University.

“This support further recognizes that we have developed a positive program for Iowa and the Midwest and for the people we serve,” said David Baldwin, director of the MFRC.

The MFRC partners include crime laboratories in 10 Midwestern states, including North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa.

In addition to its regional partners, the MFRC works with federal agencies that support forensic efforts. These agencies include the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Department of Energy; and the Department of Justice.

The MFRC has a five-part mission. The first part is to conduct short-term, case-related forensic projects for the center’s regional partners. “Through our casework-assistance program, we make available to our partners experts and instrumentation that they don’t have in their own crime labs,” said Baldwin.

The MFRC also develops new training programs for its partners. Some of the training the center has provided in the past includes analysis of arson debris and glass-fragment analysis. The center is currently exploring work with an expert at the Des Moines Police Department and the Virtual Reality Applications Center at ISU to develop animation to teach law-enforcement personnel the best ways to collect blood-spatter evidence at crime scenes and what kinds of evidence can be created during a violent crime.

In addition to casework analysis and training programs, the MFRC is working to foster a collaboration of forensic science educators at colleges and universities around the region. The goal is to create an organization that works to develop improved curricula and student experiences through shared programs and resources.

A fourth part of the MFRC mission is development of technical innovations in management and infrastructure, or TIMI. TIMI looks at how information, engineering and communication technologies can be implemented in crime laboratories to make the labs work more efficiently with existing resources. A TIMI project will evaluate the use of Radio Frequency Identification tagging, or RFID, in crime laboratories for evidence management, in particular for process management in a section such as a DNA laboratory where forensics experts need to know how long samples need to stay at certain stages and make sure they don’t go to the wrong department at the wrong time. “Using RFID tagging, you can track where evidence is supposed to be on a day-by-day basis and whose handled it,” says Baldwin. “This is critically important.”

The final part of the MFRC mission is research. The center currently has 16 research proposals under review. One project that was previously funded by the MFRC and now is a recipient of external funding is research being conducted by Scott Chumbley, an Ames Laboratory metallurgist and ISU professor of materials science and engineering. Chumbley and co-principal investigator Larry Genalo are using 3-D characterization methods and statistical methods to identify toolmarks. Toolmarks can best be explained as the individual imprints, fingerprints, if you will, that tools leave on surfaces they come in contact with. For example, a screwdriver used to jimmy a door at a crime scene will leave a toolmark on the door jam. Forensic experts use these unique marks as evidence to match crimes to criminals.

Using a device called a profilometer, a scanning tool that measures the height or depth of toolmarks and then develops a type of contour map of the marks from the scan, Chumbley can precisely characterize a toolmark. “Preliminary results show the reproducibility of the instrument is accurate to within plus or minus 0.2 microns in measuring surface topography,” said Chumbley. This work began with support from the MFRC, but in fall 2004 Chumbley received an additional $390,000 from the National Institute of Justice, a division of the Department of Justice, to continue his research.

With three years of experience under MFRC’s belt, Baldwin says the next step for the center is to convince the federal government the MFRC can provide valuable services not found elsewhere. “We hope they will see the value in our regional model for how to distribute rare resources geographically around the United States,” Baldwin says. What he would ultimately like to see is federal funding for a half-dozen centers nationwide that are outlets for federally funded research, for resources the government wants to make available, and for the development of collaborative products.

The MFRC is a member of the Institute for Physical Research and Technology, a network of research and technology-transfer centers at ISU. The Ames Laboratory is operated under contract for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science by ISU. The Ames Laboratory is also a member of IPRT.

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