National Forensic Science Week is all about showing appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the people that work in forensic science. At Bode Technology, we are privileged to have a staff full of passion for their work. This week, we want to highlight them and take a closer look into the world of forensic science at the Bode laboratory.
Meet Sarah Schmitz, a leading Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) analyst. FIGG has taken the forensics world by storm since helping identify the Golden State Killer in 2018. Bode has recently taken FIGG to the next level by taking all FIGG processes in house at our own accredited lab in Lorton, VA. Sarah started off at Bode as a George Washington fellow under the validations team. From there, she worked closely with whole genome sequencing and became one of the few people trained in this methodology. This leads Sarah to where she is today as our first FIGG analyst here at Bode.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get into forensics in general?
I don’t remember there being a definite moment, but I’ve always been really interested in science. In high school I had a forensics-type biomedical class that kind of started my interest in forensics. So, I went to West Virginia [University] for Forensic Biology and that was kind of a bigger leap anyways, because nothing in my area back in Wisconsin had anything forensics-related. So, I just decided that’s what I wanted to do and stuck with it.
What does your day-to-day look like?
It depends on the week. At the beginning of the month, I typically will be doing lab processing. I will be in the lab for a couple of days, doing library preparation and sequencing. Once that data comes off, I’ll spend some time analyzing, looking at the metrics, and then uploading into genealogical databases that we utilize for law enforcement searching. Once those results come back, that’s when the reporting process starts. So, pulling together all the paperwork necessary for previously reported things, as well as all the new genealogy information and sending that off to our genealogists who will then, you know, work backwards, use public records and data, and try to find out where that sample originated from. Their recommendations, along with the FIGG report, is what I eventually can report to the client. I have some other responsibilities thrown in there throughout the month, whether it is helping with validations projects or doing other maintenance on the sequencing instruments and such. So, just keeping track of a lot of stuff throughout the month and coordinating between myself and the rest of the team.
Can you explain the process to someone that doesn’t know anything about forensic science?
So, say there’s a case where the client had DNA evidence, and they have an unknown sample STR profile for the suspect. But after uploading that profile into CODIS and exhausting any other suspect leads, they still have no matches. That’s the type of sample that is eligible for FIGG processing, so that we can hopefully generate an investigative lead for the client on a case that was previously at a standstill. Now that we have FIGG in house, we’re getting a lot of older, cold case samples sent to us that have been previously STR tested, but they want to try and use remaining evidence to test for SNPs. For whole genome sequencing, the resulting SNP profile after we do our bioinformatics analysis has over 600,000 markers that we then upload into the genealogical databases that are authorized for law enforcement searching. After upload, we’ll get a list of matches, and like I said the genealogist will work to make sense of any relationships that are present in the match list so we can report back to the investigators. If the investigators are able to recover a sample from a suspect, that sample is then STR typed and compared back to the original evidence profile to determine if there is a match present.
What is the typical scenario when a case comes in?
As I was describing with the last question, the STR processing must have been completed on a case for it to be eligible for FIGG. Also, with SNP/FIGG processing, we’re looking at unidentified human remains cases and violent crimes cases. SNPs aren’t being used to do one-to-one comparisons that are brought into court like STRs, but SNP processing is used in tandem with STR processing to generate investigative leads. And then once you do have an investigative lead, say you find a potential suspect, the police can then investigate that further and collect a sample from them. And then that will get processed as a reference and compared back to the original evidence profile using STRs, which is what ultimately will be brought into court if necessary.
What is the most interesting thing or case you’ve worked on so far?
There’s been a lot of cool things! It’s always really fascinating because, I mean, these are mostly all cold cases, and many of them are quite old. These are all cases that didn’t have another chance to be worked on that have been sitting around for a while, and I get to be a part of the last effort to try and, you know, bring justice to the families and also just bring more awareness to how FIGG can be of utility to forensics and the safety of communities in general. It has been really cool to look at some of these cases and uncover more information from a point where they were at a standstill before. Also, it has been great to be able to interact with so many different teams at Bode, because I wasn’t involved with casework at all before. Now I feel like I get the full spread of seeing where the case starts off from sampling, doing the processing and staying involved with the validations team as we work on MPS projects, reporting with the analysts, as well as interacting with the clients, and being involved on the backend of these investigations. And recently I’ve also been able to do some traveling and talk about Bode’s FIGG processing at a couple of Promega Tech Tours! So that’s been really exciting to just be a part of a larger conversation about FIGG and forensics and collaborate with other people. I’m really grateful to be able to be involved at a higher level and, you know, see the bigger picture for FIGG while also staying close to the lab work with the cases I’m working.
What’s your favorite part about your job?
I like that I’m able to do a lot of things. I like that I’m in the lab, but I’m also doing reporting. I’m learning the ropes of all types of things reporting-wise and client communications, but I also still get to keep 1 foot in validations where, you know, if something comes up, I’m able to help troubleshoot and help out with that team. And, you know, being a part of the FIGG team is really great, and the traveling lately has been really fun! I feel like I’m in a unique position and it’s in a really cool sector of our company that I know is going to be growing. It has been awesome to be at the beginning of it to see where we can take it and how we can make it better.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Bode?
I like that everyone you talk to at Bode is kind of doing something different in a way. It’s good to have such a large company and so many people to interact with because when I was working on validations, though I love my validations team dearly, I didn’t really get to interact with casework teams all that much because it was often just two separate realms at that point. And now dipping into casework, it’s just been really cool to learn the ropes of what everyone’s doing and what specific teams are handling. And I don’t know, I think it’s cool that we as a company do such a variety of things. That really becomes apparent when I go and travel to these conferences and can see what other casework labs are doing and just seeing the scale that we operate on compared to other smaller labs is pretty incredible. And I know that everyone is doing their part on their team and that it’s a very collaborative effort.
What do you think is the most challenging thing about your job?
Well, like I said, right now the team is small, so if we’re swamped it’s not like I can always delegate to other people, we just have to find a way to get things done throughout the month. And with that, there’s other challenges that are always bound to come up where we have to do some troubleshooting and such. But again, that’s a part of the job that I enjoy. Obviously, in a validations/research space, troubleshooting is interesting, but in casework, there’s a lot of pressure to find and fix the problem. But either way, I guess it’s just been a lot of learning, and especially being so new to reporting and new to managing my own cases, I’m just learning some time management and getting further into that role.
What do you find rewarding?
I definitely like the impact of it all. Day-to-day, when I’m doing lab work, I’m often doing the same work—I’m following the SOP like I always do. I’m pipetting this and that, whatever, which doesn’t always feel like I’m making a difference. But then once the data comes off and the genealogist does a lot of incredible hard work to make something of that data, it’s amazing to see the work actually translate into a full investigation and you know, find resolution to some of these cases that honestly have not been touched for like 40 years. So that’s been really rewarding, especially because I get to be involved in the case at every level as it goes along, not just one part of the process.
Where do you see yourself in the future? What are your career goals?
I feel like I’m really lucky and I’m really grateful for the position that I’m in now. And I like the way things are going. I love being in FIGG. I love also still being attached to the validations team while jumping further into casework and reporting and everything. So, I hope that as we continue to increase our production of FIGG processing, I’ll be able to stay on this team and keep moving forward with it and bring more people onto the team. And yeah, I just love genealogy. It’s what I wanted to do when I got here, and I’m still super excited about it. I think when I had my first meeting with Kristen Naughton to talk about what I wanted to do for my GW Fellow research project, I was like, well, I think genealogy would be cool, but I don’t know if you guys are working on anything like that. And then it turned out that we were. So that worked out really, really well. And again, super grateful for that.
When you are working with cold cases and things that are difficult to handle emotionally, how does it affect you?
It’s one of those things, again, where you don’t really feel like you’re doing much for it until you see the impact of it all. Or if I’m reading something prior to working on a case, in order to not let that affect my work, it’s more of I just have to treat this sample like any other sample. But, further down the line, I guess I don’t know, just having others around who have a common goal of resolving some of these cases and understanding how important the work that we do is helps kind of negate some of the negative feelings that you get by just looking at this stuff day-to-day. But yeah, I’d say the reward of it all kind of helps keep that to a minimum.
What piece of advice would you give to someone going into this career field?
I feel like it’s just a general piece of advice, but I’m someone who likes to ask a lot of dumb questions or just a lot of questions in general. I want to make sure that I know what’s going on at every level of every process. So just never being afraid to ask questions because like I said, when I asked about genealogy, that was something I wasn’t really planning on bringing up. And I was like, you know what, I’ll just throw it out there. And then now it’s really benefited me and helped me into the position where I am right now. But yeah, in general, that’s just always been kind of the step one of how am I going to find a solution? You [have to] ask for help, you [have to] ask questions.
After talking to Sarah, we’re grateful to her for helping us learn about the world of FIGG. We are lucky to have scientists like her taking a lead on this up-and-coming technology. Just like her, we are excited to see how this emerging field shapes forensics in the future. As forensics continues to evolve it is important that we stay proactive, knowledgeable, and flexible in preparation of whatever technology will take the field by storm next.