I became a Forensic Scientist at about the age of 21. It took me a while to get into
the police, but I joined the Metropolitan Police in London as a Forensic Scientist. I then worked
for them for nearly 16 years, both Metropolitan Police and the Home Office. I've been teaching
now at Derby for about 15, 16 years, and over those those sort of 30 odd years in Forensic Science
I've got lots of good memories, lots of amazing things have happened to me. I've worked in the
worst, dirtiest, drug-ridden slums of London. I've also worked in Buckingham Palace. I've worked
for the anti-terrorist team. I've got exhibits in the Black Museum from time with the anti-terr
orist team, I've worked with authors, I've worked with TV. One of the things I worked with Terry Pratchett, the
late Terry Pratchett, fantasy author. I've made films and documentaries for TV.
I've been on Crimewatch, I've made various films for TV, and series for TV, I've been a TV advisor,
so it goes on. The the skills of Forensic Scientists are many and varied, and it's what you
do with it. So I've been privileged to have this sort of thing in my life and I've really enjoyed
it, and I love teaching, I love teaching a new generation of Forensic Scientists who are going
to start out there and take the skills that we've taught them. on and take them into the future.
My name is Jon Wright, I'm a Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science at the University of Derby.
My name is Ana, I'm from Brazil, I'm a Biologist, a Forensic Scientist, and a Lecturer in the
University. Forensic Science is a combination of many different sciences, it's an applied science,
it's a science where you learn as you go along, it's a problem-solving science,
it's literally it's the application of science to law. It encompasses such areas as biochemistry,
biology, physics, ballistics, drug analysis, firearms, fire analysis, documents, and the list goes
on. At the University of Derby we offer two courses - we offer a straight Forensic Science course which
looks at all the sciences involved, and we also offer Forensic Science with Criminology, where we
do slightly less chemistry and we do add in some criminology things, like how the police work, and
how laws work within the UK and Forensic Science with Criminology may be more applicable to somebody who
perhaps wants to go and do police work, rather than doing straight forensic science work.
In the University the forensic specialists will learn a wide range of scientific skills,
but apart from what they're doing on crime scenes, they will be able to develop skills of critical thinking
in diverse environments, and also attention to detail, that's really important
in Forensic Science. Students are taught a variety of skills, so they'll learn basic
chemistry skills, basic biology skills, basic interpretation skills, they also learn how to
look at a crime scene, recover evidence from a crime scene, analyze the evidence from crime
scenes, and present that evidence in court. We also have a number of specialists working at
the University where we teach students about entomology - the study of insects,
ballistics - study of firearms, drugs and toxicology - study of drugs, and
anthropology - the study of bones. All these sort of things are taught at University, so it's not just
basic CSI, it's not just going to a crime scene it's all the background science as well. I always
tell people that we can do anything they do in CSI, it just takes us longer than 45 minutes.
Most of the techniques that are in CSI are available in a laboratory, but we don't do it
wearing a gun on our hip, we don't look quite as glamorous, we wear full protection and
white suits, gloves, masks, things like that and as I said we can do most of the things. The one
thing we can't do that they do on CSI is we can't enlarge number plate from a grainy photograph,
because that doesn't actually happen. Some TV shows have similarities with our day-to-day work,
but the purpose of those shows are entertainment only, if you want to know what a real Forensic
Scientist does in their day-to-day work come and study with us! We've got a number of specialist
facilities at this University, the biggest one is our Forensic Training Facility, which has got a
series of custom made scenes in it, it's a detached house actually fronting onto a real street and we
use each of these scenes such as the lounge, or the bedroom, or the office, or the shop area
to set up real life scenarios for our students. It's also got full CCTV, both 360 degree
and zoom panoramic, so that we can actually watch our students and we've got audio and
talkback facilities so we can talk to our students independently whilst they're in their crime scenes.
We've also got forensic vehicles, we've got a number of forensic vehicles that
we use to train students how to analyse the vehicle, what to look for on a vehicle,
how to search them, we've got fantastic outdoor facilities for crime scenes varying from
grassland, to sort of industrial areas, we've got a clandestine burial facility where we can actually
look at insect infestation and time since death, we've got a bone facility and a bone room where we
look at anthropology, and we've got large collections and access to large collections
of skeletal remains where we can train the students on those. We've also got a intensive
insect facility where we breed up insects, so we breed flies and things, so we can actually see what
these flies are, how long they live for, and again we can calculate life cycles and time of death.
So
we've got a a good team of teaching staff at the University of Derby and we all come from different
diverse backgrounds, we've got a number of people like myself who are ex-professional Forensic
Scientists, so we've worked with either the police or one of the forensic providers, we've even got
Ana who's worked in Brazil as a Forensic Scientist, we've got medical staff, we've got
anthropologists, we've got entomologists, and we've even got medical photographers on the
staff. Ee try and work with partners in industry, we try and work with partners in police forces, and in
other support industries for Forensic Science as much as possible. We have students, we have, we
run a an industrial year course so it's a three-year course with a sandwich year in
it where our students often go out into industry and will work for a year, working with either the
police forensic science laboratories, or some of the private forensic science laboratories. We do
a 30-hour work placement with our students where they can do what we call live briefs, and work with
the industry, and work trying to problem solve on a small basis for for the industry. We also
have connections with people like Derby Fire and Rescue, Derby Hospital, and Derbyshire Police Force.
So from my experience there is no such a thing as a typical day for a Forensic Science specialist,
it all depends on which area you work, because a typical day form a Crime Scene Investigator
can be quite different from a Forensic specialist that works in a laboratory environment.
If you are a Crime Scene Investigator and you are on call you have to deal with a variety of things
in different areas, if you are a laboratory examiner you also will be dealing with
different cases every day, despite you're doing more or less the same set of exams every time, if
you work in a laboratory then you may be doing fairly standard routine things all the time.
If you're working and doing crime scene analysis you could be going out to a crime scene
in any part of your area, or even any part of the country, the best way to find out what's happening
in Forensic Science perhaps is to listen to the news before you go into work, because if there's been
a major incident then you might be going out to that when you get into work. You can be a Forensic
Scientist and you can do DNA analysis all day, so you could stay in a lab, or you could be a crime
scene going Forensic Scientist, or you could be a Fire Investigator so you could be going to fires
and the aftermath of fires, it really depends which job role you go for, and there are many, many job
roles in Forensic Science. So if you like working the lab and that's that's where you, you get your
pleasure, that's very easy to do, but if you want to go and do something that means you're going out
every day and dealing with members of the public and dealing with police officers
and things like that, that's also available. Our students go into many different kinds of jobs,
some go into Forensic Science in the UK, some go into Forensic Science abroad, I've got students
who work in America, students are working in the United Arab Emirates, I've got students working
different jobs, students work in health and safety, I've got students working as Explosive Scientists.
Some students take a completely different path and go into teaching in the UK, a number of students
go into teaching science, Forensic Science, because it's such a diverse and varied science,
sets you up very well for teaching the STEM subjects in the UK. A Forensic Science degree
will allow a student to work in a wide range of places such as crime scenes, to laboratories,
or you could work in cold cases, or you could develop consultantancy work, it all depends on the
area of specialization that you will do during the studies here. We expect our students to do -
every student has to do 30 hours work experience, and this can be almost anything, but currently
we're actually running a series of what we call live briefs where we are working with police forces, and
individuals, and forensic science providers, looking at problems that they've got so each student is
looking at certain areas of the problem, they're then going to present that back to the forensic
science provider, or the police, in a presentation style and and hopefully inform their future work.
What i enjoy the most working as a Forensic Scientist is that I'm never bored,
because you have such a broad range of areas that you can work, with taking an example as myself
when I first joined Forensic Science I was working as a Crime Scene Investigator,
then after that I explored my skills in a drug laboratory, and a couple of years later I've moved
to be a Lecturer in Forensic Science, so within the same career you can choose to do many many jobs,
so a lot of options and a lot of things for you to do and develop skills on. I've
been a Forensic Scientist now for over 30 years, I still find something new every day.