Lunch will be served directly in the room for the attendees.

Advancing DNA Analysis for Forensic Casework

The Paradyme™ 27GY system incorporates Reduced Stutter Polymerase (RSP) chemistry, helping to address one of the key challenges that stutter artefacts pose for profile analysis and interpretation. Evaluation of this RSP-formulated kit suggests that it can simplify profile analysis, contributor number assignment, and probabilistic mixture interpretation, while streamlining workflows contribute to faster turnaround times. These results demonstrate the practical advantages of the Paradyme™ 27GY kit for forensic laboratories, particularly for the interpretation of complex DNA mixtures.

The program will feature two focused talks:

• Advancing STR analysis: how reduced-stutter chemistry and probabilistic genotyping work together to improve mixture interpretation
• Implementation of multiple IDseek® kits in a forensic setting, gradually integrating MPS as a more routine tool in forensics.

Whether your lab is considering MPS for special cases or increasing the power of your CE workflow, this session will offer practical insights for improving forensic DNA analysis.

The event is full

Kevin Cheng

Kevin is a Science Leader at PHF Science (formerly ESR) with the STRmix team. Over the past decade, Kevin has worked alongside the STRmix team and international collaborators in the research and development of solutions to advance DNA mixture interpretation and help laboratories adopt modern DNA mixture interpretation methods. During this time, Kevin also completed his PhD in Statistics from the University of Auckland, where his research focused on sequence-based mixture interpretation. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
 

Kristiaan van der Gaag

Kris van der Gaag is a scientific researcher at the NFI (the Hague, the Netherlands) that has always focused on implementing new methods in forensics. After starting his forensic career in 2002 at the Leiden University Medical Centre performing casework and research projects using mostly CE-technology for multiple applications, he has been one of the early adaptors in forensics of Massively Parallel Sequencing since the start of his PhD in 2009. He’s been involved in the technical as well as the bioinformatic data analysis part and continued his career at the NFI since 2015 to bring MPS to forensic practice. With a broad interest the MPS activities have mostly involved mitochondrial DNA, STR sequencing, phenotypic / ancestry prediction and WGS application of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy.