Description

Who you are or aren’t and how you can prove it are the key questions and problems in Human Identification (HID). Determining a person’s identity is not only critical for criminal forensics, but also for immigration, human trafficking, counter-terrorism, and disaster victim recovery. DNA is the gold standard for unambiguous human ID. I will describe everything you may want to know about a DNA fingerprint: what is a DNA fingerprint, how it can be determined, what it can/can’t tell you, and when/where you might want to determine a DNA fingerprint.

About The Speaker
Paul Matsudaira received Biology and Chemistry degrees in 1975 from the University of Washington and a PhD in Biological Sciences from Dartmouth College in 1981. After postdoctoral research in Goettingen, Germany and Cambridge, UK, he joined the faculty of the Whitehead Institute and MIT Department of Biology in 1985 where his lab worked on how a cell moves and on microanalytical methods. One method he developed was a rapid way to separate DNA molecules in a microfluidic device. In 2000, he and his MIT students founded NetBio, a privately held company in Waltham, MA, that now makes the “DNAscan Rapid DNA Analysis System” for on-site human identification. While at MIT he rose to the rank of Professor of Biology, Department Biology and Professor of Bioengineering, Dept. of Biological Engineering, and held positions as Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty, Director of the Computational and Systems Biology Initiative, and Director of the WI-MIT BioImaging Center. In 2009, he moved to the National University of Singapore as Head, Department of Biological Sciences, Director, NUS Centre for BioImaging Sciences, and co-Director, MechanoBiology Institute. His NUS lab studies the mechanics of cell movements and develops new imaging methods for the electron microscope.