Who we are

Each of our academic staff use their experience and understanding of their sub-disciplines and its impact on our communities and quality of life, to bring relevance to this subject. This includes UN Sustainability Development Goals around Peace and Society and Health. In particular, we share the vision that crime reduction, crime solving and national security in general are important for society and that Science significantly contributes addressing these challenges.

Distinguished Professor Claude Roux
Centre Director

Distinguished Professor Claude Roux is the Director of the UTS Centre for Forensic Science. His teaching and research activities cover a broad spectrum of forensic science, including trace evidence and chemical criminalistics, documents, fingerprints, forensic intelligence and the contribution of forensic science to policing and security.

Find out more about Distinguished Professor Claude Roux

Associate Professor Xanthe Spindler
Deputy Director

Associate Professor Xanthe Spindler is a forensic scientist who teaches and supervises research projects across the areas of fingermark detection, chemical criminalistics and activity level interpretation.

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Our academic leaders

Listed in alphabetical order

Associate Professor Philip Birch

Associate Professor Philip Birch is a criminologist who started his career in the 1990’s as a practitioner, working in the British Prison Service, as well as in the Community Safety/Crime Prevention field, which included the management of a Specialist Crime Unit. Philip moved into academia in 2007 and has worked in the British, North American and Australian university systems. Philip’s areas of research are based on his practice background and focus on: Police/Policing; Assessment, Treatment & Management of Offenders; Community Safety & Crime Prevention and Sex Work.

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Associate Professor Scott Chadwick

Associate Professor Scott Chadwick is an alumnus of UTS, completing his undergraduate and PhD at the Centre for Forensic Science. He works across a range of areas in Forensic Science including fingermark detection, gunshot residue, document analysis and forensic intelligence.

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Dr Mackenzie de la Hunty

Dr Mackenzie de la Hunty is a forensic chemist, who joined us from the Australian Federal Police in 2022. She specialises in forensic education and training in tertiary and corporate environments and provides casework consultancy services. Her research is in fire investigation, and the development of latent fingermarks.

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Professor Shanlin Fu

Professor Shanlin Fu is a Forensic Toxicologist/Analytical Chemist who joined the Centre for Forensic Science in 2008. His research focuses on sensitive screening of poisons and drugs including drugs of abuse for clinical diagnosis, therapeutic drug monitoring and law enforcement applications.

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Dr Alicia Haines

Dr Alicia Haines is a Forensic Biologist with teaching and research interests in evidence recovery and DNA analysis. She has prior experience working in industry forensic biology laboratories in both New Zealand and Western Australia. Her research is in detecting and enhancing trace DNA on items and surfaces.

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Dr Paula Tarttelin Hernandez

Dr Paula Tarttelin Hernandez is a Forensic Scientist/ Analytical Chemist with a research agenda that lies at the intersections of Forensic Science, Chemistry, and Security and Crime Science. Examples of her research interests include the detection and disruption of illegal trafficking markets through intelligence development, the understanding of drug trends, and the use of inexpensive and portable sensor technology to detect trace vapours relevant to criminal activities.

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Professor Dennis McNevin

Professor Dennis McNevin investigates forensic problems using genetics and genomics. He has provided expert services for the Australian Federal Police (where he first began his forensic career), NSW Police Force and NSW Health Pathology Forensic and Analytical Science Service. Prior to joining the Centre for Forensic Science in 2018, he has held academic positions at the University of Canberra, the Australian National University and the University of Sydney.

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Associate Professor Georgina Meakin

Associate Professor Georgina Meakin teaches and supervises research on a range of topics within forensic biology, and occasionally provides advice and consultancy in casework. Her research centres on the transfer, persistence, prevalence and recovery of DNA, with a focus on informing crime scene practice and evaluation given activity-level propositions. 

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Dr Marie Morelato

Dr Marie Morelato is a forensic scientist with teaching and research interests in general forensic science and forensic intelligence. This includes various areas using forensic case data to decipher organised systems (e.g. organised crime, security), e.g. the triangulation of data coming from different sources.

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Dr Maiken Ueland

Dr Maiken Ueland is a forensic analytical chemist working across chemistry and forensic science. Her research is focused on human decomposition chemistry with a special interest in biomarkers in tissue and odour, and their use in criminal investigations.

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Professor Shui Yu

Professor Shui Yu is a Professor of School of Computer Science, Deputy Chair of University Research Committee, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Professor Yu has promoted the research field of networking for big data since 2013, and his research outputs have been widely adopted by industrial systems, such as Amazon cloud security. His research interest includes Cybersecurity, Network Science, Big Data, and Mathematical Modelling.

Find out more about Shui Yu