Since the founding of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford’s forensic science program in 2017, majors have been proliferating faster than the true-crime podcasts that inspire them.
With a new program director and two new mass spectrometers, the program is ready to take its next steps.
Following the retirement of Dr. Francis Mulcahy, associate professor of chemistry, in the spring, Dr. Robin Choo, assistant professor of biology and a trained toxicologist will lead the program. She is working with current and new faculty to add courses to the multi-disciplinary curriculum and has secured a new gas chromatography mass spectrometer and a high-pressure liquid chromatography mass spectrometer that will allow students to analyze evidence. For example, the new equipment can find trace amounts of drugs in biological samples or examine the chemical profile of evidence such as paint chips, blood, fiber samples and more.
The two new mass spectrometers are the first equipment purchases in a three-year plan to set up a forensic science lab at Pitt-Bradford and achieve accreditation for the program.
“Crimes are solved with evidence that you can’t see,” Choo said.
The forensic science major at Pitt-Bradford includes elements of biology, chemistry and criminal justice. While forensic science itself is a growing field, the major gives students a concrete science background based in method and problem-solving that can be useful across a variety of careers from doctors to lawyers to a variety of investigators, including analysts, intelligence officers, detectives, toxicologist or serologist (a person who scrutinizes bodily fluids).
In addition to analyzing evidence, students learn how to secure and process a crime scene in the campus’s crime scene investigation house.
In the field of forensic science, the number of jobs for forensic science technicians is expected to increase 11% between 2021 and 2031, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also cites median pay of $62,000. At Pitt-Bradford, the number of students in the major has nearly quadrupled since 2018.
Choo herself studied biology as an undergraduate student at Mary Baldwin University in Virginia, planning to follow in the medical footsteps of two nurses in her own family.
“I was sitting in a medical school interview when the interviewer said, ‘You don’t want to be a doctor, do you?’” she said, realizing at that moment that, no, as much as she liked biology, she didn’t really want to be a doctor.
Choo took several years to explore other avenues for her biology degree: she set up a lab, she worked in a canine endocrinology research lab, and she removed eyes from donors for an eye bank. Gradually, she thought she would like to have her career involve pharmacology, settling on earning a doctorate in toxicology, where she studied the effects and detection of poisons.
As part of her graduate school research, she studied how in utero opiate exposure affected babies when they were born. When her husband, Dr. Charles Choo, associate professor of physics, began
teaching at the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, Robin Choo did as well, and discovered that she loved teaching as much as researching.
Like solving a forensic mystery, Choo says, “Students are a puzzle, too – figuring out the best way they learn. I want them to enjoy it.”