Best Paper Award Recipients

Winners

WINNER: Best Paper - Forensic Fundamentals

• Misidentifications of alphanumeric characters in serial number restorations
  Joel Waszczuk, Lochlan Peacock, Scott Chadwick, Philip Maynard, Jennifer Raymond and Claude Roux

• Reference measurements for average human neurocranial bone density to inform head trauma interpretations
  Samantha Rowbotham, Calvin Mole, Diana Tieppo, Magda Blaszkowska, Stephen Cordner and Soren Blau

WINNER: Best Paper - Capability Enhancement and Innovation

• A lights-out forensic DNA analysis workflow for no-suspect crime
  Duncan Taylor and Damien Abarno

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Best Paper - Capability Enhancement and Innovation

• Preparation of a low-cost fingerprint powder that harnesses white light to emit long-lived phosphorescence
  Scarlet Hopkins, Kristen Clarke, Matthew Krosch and William Gee

WINNER: Best Technical Article, Note or Case Study

• Verification of a reduced sample extraction time for the RSID^TM-Saliva test
  Felicia Bardan, Vivian Pham-Nguyen, Julie Absolom, Maria Bellis, Natasha Mitchell and Julianne Henry

• N,N-Diformylmescaline: A novel analogue of mescaline detected in Queensland
  Ryan Gallagher, Maddison McLaughlin, Karen Blakey, Urs Wermuth, Sue Boyd and Jenny McGowan

WINNER: Best Literature Review or Opinion Article

• Textile damage science—Is it a reliable science?
  Kate Sloan, Macarthur Fergusson and James Robertson

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Best Literature Review or Opinion Article

• An interdisciplinary forensic approach for human remains identification and missing persons investigations
  Ayusha Dahal, Dennis McNevin, Madelen Chikhani and Jodie Ward

WINNER: Best New Publisher in a Refereed Journal

• Novices cannot fill the examiners' shoes: Evidence of footwear examiners' expertise in shoe comparisons
  Rachel Chapman, Stephanie Summersby, Tanya Lang, Jennifer Raymond and Kaye Ballantyne

List of Submissions

• A casework study: The effect of the porcine digestive process on animal carcasses and human teeth
  Lauren Atwood, Russell Lain, Jessica Kotzander, Penny McCardle, Brett Mason, Jennifer Raymond and Alison Sears

• A comprehensive study into false positive rates for 'other' biological samples using common presumptive testing methods
  Angela Stroud, Amelia Gamblin, Penny Birchall, SallyAnn Harbison and Stephanie Opperman
  
  
• Changing diagnostic patterns in cases of sudden and unexpected natural death in infants and young children
  Roger Byard and Luzern Tan
  
  
• Changing trends and characteristics of one punch deaths in Australia (2012-2018)
  Jennifer Schumann, Reena Sarkar, Marko Grbic, Olaf Drummer, Dimitri Gerostamoulos, Linda Iles and Richard Bassed
  
  
• Characteristics of analytically confirmed gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) positive patients in the emergency department: Presentation, poly-drug use, disposition and impact on intensive care resource utilisation
  Peter Stockham, Emma Partridge, Sam Alfred, Laura Boyle, Andrew Camilleri, Hannah Green, Daniel Haustead, Melissa Humphries, Chris Kostakis and Jake Mallon

• Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—features and forensic considerations
  Roger Byard, Marianna Tiemensma, Michael Buckland and Robert Vink

• Designing the future of forensic science: mêtis and forensic intelligence
  Michael Taylor

• Development of a simple cell harvesting method to maximise DNA recovery from historic microscope slides for sexual assault investigations
  Colby Hymus, Scott Egan and Jasmine Tay
  
  
• Developmental validation of STRmix™ NGS, a probabilistic genotyping tool for the interpretation of autosomal STRs from forensic profiles generated using NGS
  Kevin Cheng, Jo-Anne Bright , Hannah Kelly, Yao-Yuan Liu, Meng-Han Lin, Maarten Kruijver, Duncan Taylor and John Buckleton

• Enhanced efficiency of PreFilerTM BTA DNA extraction kit with PrepFiler^TM lysis buffer top-up over sample remnants
  Courtney Cameron, Colby Hymus, Kenny Quach, Shannen Blackwell and Jasmine Tay

• Exploring how the LR of a POI in a target sample is impacted by awareness of the profile of the background derived from an area adjacent to the target sample
  Jack Reither, Duncan Taylor, Bianca Szkuta and Roland van Oorschot

• Extending the discrete Laplace method: incorporating multi copy loci, partial repeats and null alleles
  Maarten Kruijver, Duncan Taylor and John Buckleton

• Guide to the postmortem investigation of starvation in adults
  Jack Garland and Rebecca Irvine

• Increased incidence of mixed drug toxicity deaths involving tapentadol – a forensic study
  Lilli Stephenson, Corinna Van Den Heuvel, Melissa Humphries, Timothy Scott and Roger Byard

• Investigations into fentanyl precursors method classification by handheld Fourier transform infrared an Raman spectroscopy combined with multivariate statistical analysis
  Hugh McKeown, Trevor Rook, James Pearson and Oliver Jones

• Management and disclosure of quality issues in forensic science: A survey of current practice in Australia and New Zealand
  Anna Heavey, Gavin Turbett, Max Houck and Simon Lewis

• Microbial degradation products of lurasidone and their significance in postmortem toxicology
  Jared Castle, Danielle Butzbach, G. Stewart Walker, Claire Lenehan, Frank Reith, Samuel Costello and K. Paul Kirkbride

• Myocarditis in the forensic setting
  Adele Oyarzun, Sarah Parsons and Richard Bassed

• Myocarditis in the forensic setting – a review of the literature
  Adele Oyarzun, Sarah Parsons and Richard Bassed

• Persistence of cellular material after exposure to water
  Madison Nolan, Oliva Handt and Adrian Linacre

• Recovery of integrated and surface trace DNA from illicit drug tablets
  Amy Griffin, K. Paul Kirkbride, Julianne Henry, Ben Painter and Adrian Linacre

• Retro-Friedel crafts unlocks a new class of ATS precursors
  Timothy Currie and Sean Davis

• Standards and accreditation
  Anna Heavey and Max Houck

• The isotopic compositions of hexamine solid fuel tablets used to manufacture hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) explosive
  Tony Peter, James Carter, Emily Bennett and Shalona Anuj

• Time dependent effects of decalcification and formalin solutions on 9mm calibre fired bullet striae
  Matthew Bolton, Joel Waszczuk, Daniel Paine and Timothy Berry

• Voronoi natural neighbours tessellation: An interpolation and grid agnostic approach to forensic soil provenancing
  Michael G Aberle, James Robertson and Jurian Hoogewerff

Previous Award Recipients

Previous recipients of the NIFS Best Paper Awards can be downloaded here and are also be found in NIFS quarterly newsletter.