Attend a DNA Academy now, at no cost to you… Next DNA Academy is COMPLETELY funded by NIJ!!!

The Northeast Regional Forensic Institute (NERFI) has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), award #: 2008-DN-BX-K173.

With these funds, NERFI is able to offer a fully funded 16-week DNA Academy. The next Academy will begin on Monday, July 27 and run until Friday, November 20, 2009. The Academy will be held at the NERFI facility located on the University at Albany’s campus in Albany, New York.     

All student expenses will be funded by the NIJ grant! 

Expenses covered include: cost to attend academy, all laboratory supplies, necessary office supplies, laptop for student’s use while at NERFI, text books and articles, hotel room for the duration of stay, per diem (Albany county -$49/day), and one round-trip flight. What is not covered – taxis and rental cars.  

NERFI’s DNA Academies are designed to bring about competency in DNA analysis through an intensive 16-week training program that is presented in 4 modules.  Module 1: 1.5-weeks of molecular biology, Module 2: 12-weeks laboratory bench work, Module 3: 1-week of forensic statistics, and concluding with Module 4: 1.5-week moot court exercise.

This intensive training program is achieved through an academically-approved Curriculum and instruction presented by Experts from the various disciplines within forensic science.  Extensive exams are given on molecular biology (4-hours), statistics, and all material covered at the conclusion of the academy (4-hours).  One-hour oral quizzes are also given throughout the training.  The students will meet one-on-one with an instructor and verbalize their understanding of the material covered during the relevant module. These quizzes allow the instructors to determine the student’s level of competency for each module before moving on to the next.

Module 2, the Laboratory Training, includes: organic extraction, differential extraction, quantitation (Quantifiler® Human and AB 7500), amplification (Identifiler®), and fragment analysis using Applied Biosystems’s 3130xl.  While in the academy, students will complete the analysis of at least Fifty Samples.  The students will work independently to process these samples beginning with extraction straight through generating case reports, complete with statistical calculations.  Data are analyzed / interpreted using GeneMapper® ID v3.2.1.  In addition, students will analyze an additional fifteen electronic data sets (completing case reports for these as well) to meet the intent of SWGDAM guidelines.

The capstone of the DNA Academy is Module 4: the Moot Court Exercise.  NERFI has retained the expertise of several experienced attorneys (as well as a judge), a court room at Albany Law School, and a professional videographer.  At the conclusion of each student’s moot testimony, they are critiqued by NERFI’s experts and attorneys.  The students are offered praise as well as suggestions on how to improve for the future.  Each individual in attendance at the moot court is asked to complete a critique sheet for each student’s testimony. 

These critique comments, for each individual, are compiled into a report and supplied to the student.  In addition, a list of mistakes made, comprehensively, by all of the students is compiled and supplied to the students as a reminder for future testimony – allowing them to learn from each other’s mistakes.  Each NERFI student is also given a DVD copy of their moot testimony to keep.  They are asked to share this taping with either their supervisor or technical leader so they may learn / polish their testimony skills further.

During the course of an Academy, additional experts from the field of forensic science visit to give lectures in their area of expertise. Some such lectures include: Ethics – Doug Lucas, PhD; Mixture Interpretation – Joanne Sguelgia; Population Genetics – M. Katherine Gonder, PhD; STRs and Capillary Electrophoresis – John Butler, PhD; as well as others.  

These lectures and other happenings are documented by the students in weekly Assessment Memos. Here we ask them to document each stage of their training experience at NERFI.  We believe this helps many students communicate more fully with the NERFI staff…as well as provide added documentation for their training records. The students are responsible for e-mailing their assessment memos to both the NERFI staff and their supervisor - every Monday by 8:00am.  In addition, each student’s progress is tracked weekly by the NERFI instructors through the use of Performance Metrics.

Each lecture a student receives, each Sample Set they complete, every Simulated Data Set they work on, the number of independent instrument set ups performed, moot court critiques, and completion certificates are all tracked here.  Every Friday afternoon, a copy of the student’s performance metric is e-mailed to the student’s supervisor.  This allows the supervisors in the home labs to track the progress of their staff while training off-site at NERFI. 

We also encourage the supervisors to freely and openly communicate with NERFI staff via e-mail or telephone.  At the conclusion of the Academy, for those students who have successfully completed all aspects of the training, a Completion Certificate is issued.  This is provided so that the technical leader of the student’s laboratory may keep it on file as a record of the student’s extensive off-site training.

To date, over one hundred students from across the county have completed a NERFI DNA Academy. Many of our students are on-line performing case work in approximately 8 months (including the 4 months at NERFI). Read reviews from our most recent academy Students and their Agency - the San Francisco Crime Laboratory, San Francisco, CA.

Preference is given to those students who are currently employed in a forensic laboratory and possess the FBI QAS courses (molecular biology, genetics, and biochemistry). If you are interested please electronically submit your Curriculum Vitae, official academic transcript, and a letter of recommendation/commitment from your agency.

Please e-mail all application materials to Jamie Belrose at Jamie.Belrose@gmail.com. If you have questions, please contact Jamie via e-mail or phone (518) 442-4355.  The Academy is filling up quickly, apply today!!!