Lab moving to WVU (July 2011).  Starting Aug 1, Dr. Jackson will be starting a new appointment as a Ming Hsieh Distinguished Professor of Forensic and Investigative Science, and Associate Professor of Chemistry at West Virginia University (WVU). Feng Jin, Yan An and Bobby Deimler will all me making the transition to WVU with Dr. Jackson. Our new labs and offices will be housed in Oglebay Hall in the Downtown campus of WVU. Dr. Harrington will be assuming the role of Director of the Forensic Chemistry Program here at OU. 

Dr. Jackson provides expert opinion on Nancy Grace HLN/CNN (Jun 2011).  On the June 27th airing of Nancy Grace live, Dr. Jackson answered questions via telephone about the odors detected in Casey Anthony's car. (see a transcript of the show here)

BACKGROUND: The prosecution had provided evidence (via Arpad Vass) of five chemical odors identified through GC-MS that were found in the trunk of the car that were said to be indicative of human decomposition. The defense provided a witness (Ken Furton) who claimed the odors are not unique to humans. Another witness for the prosecusion (Mike Sigman) testified that he could not say with confidence that the odors he detected were unique to human decomposition.

For the record, Dr. Jackson agrees with Nancy Grace that 'consumer' amounts or trace amounts of decompozing foodstuff is not likely to produce the same level (i.e. concentration) of odor as a decomposing human in the same sealed volume like the trunk of a car. However, the subjective human olfactory system is not admissible forensic evidence in court, so one's familiarity with the smell of decomposing matter is a moot point. 

Yan An receives Richard Eddy service award (May 2011).  Congratulations to Yan for receiveing the Richard Eddt service award a the Departmental awards evening this spring. Yan received the award for all the work she does on the instrumentation in the forensic chemistry laboratory, and for all the training and support she provides to all the TAs and gradaute students who use the instruments.

Jackson and Harrington acknowledged in Slate.com article (Jan 2011).  Dr. Jackson and Dr. Harrington provided expert opinion to Brian Palmer of Slate.com (part of The Washington Post), who wrote an article on the Moscow Domodedovo airport bombing in January. A link to the article is here.

New members join the group (Nov 2010).  We are pleased to welcome two new graduate students, Ayat Rashaid and Mengliang Zhang, to the group. See the group page for details.

Group represents NSF at the USA Science and Engineering Festival (Oct 2010).  Dr. Jackson took two undergraute students (Lee Greenawald and Rachael Kyper) to the first USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC to host an exhibit titled "You Could be a Forensic Scientist!" The exhibit was co-hosted with Prof. Facundo Fernandez of Georgia Tech. More than 100,000 people attended the huge science festival and first graders to retireees were given the opportunity to handle the miniature, portable scientific instruments at our exhibit. Theses included and XRF (thanks to Bruker), and FTIR (thanks to A2 Technologies) and a Raman instrument (thanks to Thermo). Click here to see a related article in Compass.

Memorable highlights of our exhibit include: 

1) the six year old who had to make is own 'ray gun' noise when he was using the hand-held X-Ray Fluorescence instrument (bzzzzzzzzzz...).
2) the second grader who spent 45 minutes at our exhibit and analyzed every sample we had (some more than once!).
3) the first-grade triplets who loved the FT-IR system: one would analyze a sample while the other two would "cook" the next sample (the samples were never quite as pure after that).
4) the woman who discovered her air-loom wedding band was almost pure gold, not a lower carat.
5) the high school kid who saw his 'boring' white powder give a positive result for "cocaine" on the FTIR. His excitement lasted about as long as it took him to realize that we weren't letting him handle real cocaine, but we had him hooked for a few seconds.
5) the countless smiles and looks of awe, and fear, as kids and adults were handed a portable scientific instrument to use.

Graduate Students Zeland and Carolyn Graduate (June 2010). Congratulations to Zeland and Carolyn. We wish you all the best.

Undergraduate Researchers Christine, Sam and Mark Graduate (June 2010). Congratulations to Christine Fisher, Sam Blake and Mark Barkett, and thank you for all your efforts. Christine will begin her Ph.D. with Prof. Scott McLuckey at Purdue University over the summer and Sam will be joining Prof. David Muddiman's group at North Carolina State university to pursue her Ph.D. Mark will be starting Med School in the fall at Lake Erie COM.

Carolyn successfully defends Ph.D. (April 2010). Congratulations to Carolyn for successfully defending her dissertation. Carolyn is currently performing research with Dr. Birkenmeier at the University of Leipzig, Germany. 

Article featured on the cover of Spectrocopy  (Feb 2010).  Our recent collaboration with Dr. Harrington's group has lead to a publication and the front cover of Spectrocopy. The first author on the paper is Andreas Baum, a visiting scholar from the University of Leipzig who worked with Dr. Harrington and our group in the spring/summer of 2009. The research describes the use of compound specific isotope ratio mass spectromety to distinguish between different origins of virgin olive oil. 

Zeland successfully defends Ph.D. (Jan 2010). Congratulations to Zeland for successfully defending her dissertation. Zeland is currently a research fellow with Dr. Jeffrey Supko through Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.

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