Staff and Affiliates
Our forensic scientists have extensive experience in assisting in cases from burglary to murder and are all at the top of their fields of expertise, regularly giving evidence in court. Whatever your request, we can provide you with a tailored service to suit your individual needs, where necessary examining your items in our modern secure laboratory facility. We respond promptly to your queries, giving support and advice whenever it is required and report our scientific findings in clear, concise and comprehensive statements. We are used to working to tight deadlines and keep you informed of work progress to ensure you are kept up to date with results as they are interpreted. Our forensic scientists are also frequently called upon to deliver one of our bespoke forensic training courses. Please see below for a list of many, but by no means an exhaustive list of our staff:
Stuart Hamilton MB ChB BMSC(Hons) FRCPath MFFLM
Professor John Hunter BA, PhD, FSA, MIFA, FFSSoc
John Manlove BA MSc DIC PhD RFP FFSSoc
Dr W Meier-Augenstein, CChem, FRSC
Samantha Pickles BSc PGCE MFSSoc
Barrie Simpson, BA (Hons) MSc MSc CertED MFSSoc
Simon has been a forensic scientist since 1986 and carries out examination involving footwear marks, tool marks, physical fit, glass, paint and other particulates, producing reports and statements for courts. Simon has given evidence in crown courts, magistrate’s courts and county courts in relation to the casework undertaken.
Simon also has experience in photography and footwear mark enhancement work including the lifting of marks and has also attended scenes to enhance footwear marks in blood. He has also trained other members of staff in photography and other evidence types as well as given training to scenes of crime officers in relation to footwear mark and tool mark recovery.
Before joining MFL Forensics, Kay worked as part of a national firearms team covering all of Scotland. Her current role comprises the forensic examination of firearms, firearm related items and damage and involves; the examination and interpretation of crime scenes, attendance of post mortem examinations, preparation of court reports and court attendance when required. In 2009 Kay was involved in the successful implementation of the NaBIS (National Ballistic Intelligence Service) in Scotland.
Kay is also a drugs reporting scientist and has previously worked as a Casework Co-ordinator where it was her role to prioritise the high level of case work, disseminating it amongst the remaining members of the team to facilitate the most efficient reporting. A large proportion of urgent casework requires quick and effective liaison between police officers, procurator fiscals and other crime agencies. The remaining work of the section in which she worked was the day to day analysis of productions by a variety of techniques including GC-MS, HPLC, TLC, GC-FID and GC-NPD.
Bob Ardrey joined the Central Research Establishment of the Forensic Science Service in 1974 where he was responsible for the development of methods for the analysis of drugs and their metabolites.
Bob joined the University of Huddersfield in 1990 where he led the team that developed the Forensic and Analytical Science degree course. He retired in 2007 and was appointed as a Senior Research Fellow within the Forensic Science Research Unit at the University where he maintains his involvement in forensic science research. Bob continues to be involved in the training of forensic scientists, teaching on the academic courses at Huddersfield and also by the provision of bespoke courses on drug related matters.
Bob has provided many expert witness reports on issues such as the interpretation of trace drug contamination found on banknotes, on mobile telephones and in motor vehicles, the profiling of drug seizures, the determination and interpretation of drug purity data and the legal classification of designer drugs such as the former “legal highs”.
Professor Sue Black is the Director of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. She has over 25 years of experience in the national and international field of forensic anthropology and human identification, and has given evidence in criminal and Coroner's courts in the United Kingdom, Europe, and USA. In her professional capacity as a forensic anthropologist and in matters pertaining to human identity, she has assisted the British Government, various European and Foreign Governments, national and international police forces, military investigators, the United Nations and the FBI. She was a speciality assessor for forensic anthropology and a registered practitioner with the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners. She is the President and a founder member of the British Association for Human Identification (BAHID) and a registered expert with the National Policing Improvements Agency. She was awarded an OBE in February of 2002 for services to Forensic Anthropology in Kosovo. She is the author of 8 academic text books, 12 chapters in other texts and over 60 peer reviewed communications all in the field of forensic anthropology and human identification.
From joining the then Bristol laboratory of FSS in 1972, Bob spent his first years working as an assistant in the Chemistry and Drugs section. In 1979 he qualified as a volume crime reporting officer at the Chepstow laboratory of the FSS (on the merger of the south west of England and Wales FSS laboratories).
Over the next thirty years Bob has reported various casework including marks and traces and alcohol technical defence. In addition attended many crime scenes and gave evidence in numerous courts across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
He left the FSS when the Chepstow laboratory closed at the end of 2010 to become an independent forensic consultant specialising in marks and alcohol technical defence cases.
Stuart Hamilton MB ChB BMSC(Hons) FRCPath MFFLM
Dr Hamilton graduated from Medical School in Dundee 1998 and spent two years in clinical medicine, mainly in Newcastle upon Tyne, before moving into histopathology in Manchester in 2000. He then moved back to Newcastle to train in forensic pathology in 2003 and was awarded his Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists in forensic pathology 2008 and joined the Home Office Register of Forensic Pathologists shortly afterward. He spent three years in this capacity in the North East of England before being appointed Deputy Chief Forensic Pathologist for the East Midlands.
He performs autopsies in cases of suspicious death and provides expert opinion on the nature and causation of injuries, both in the living and the dead. As such, he spends a considerable amount of time providing expert testimony in various courts. He has performed around 3000 autopsies ranging from simple sudden and unexpected deaths to complex multiple homicides, and regularly teaches on aspects of forensic pathology and has provided expert comment various newspaper articles and TV programmes, and has provided advice on forensic matters to various TV dramas.
Allen Hirson, a Senior Lecturer in Phonetics at City University in London has worked on around 1100 cases involving evidential speech recordings over a 23 year period, and has given evidence at all levels from Magistrates to the International Criminal Court and International Commissions of Enquiry (e.g. in a case of a cockpit voice recorder). He is Lecturer in Phonetics and Director of the Speech Acoustics Laboratory at this institution. He is also a Founder Member of the professional association overseeing Forensic Phonetics internationally (the IAFPA) and a serving member of the Board of Governors of the Expert Witness Institute. Work includes telephone recordings, covert recordings, handling matters of speaker identification, speech decoding and other matters. He has worked on some 21 languages other than English where he has collaborated with appropriate language specialists. As an independent forensic scientist he works roughly equally for the Prosecution and the Defence.
With forty one years experience as a forensic scientist, Ray has acquired considerable experience in the areas of footwear marks, instrument marks, manufacturing marks and defects, investigating the causes of fires and explosions, scenes of crime work, glass, paint, polymers, altered and erased documents, firearms, traffic accident investigation and the chemical development and enhancement of fingerprints.
He has attended approximately twelve hundred scenes of fires and in excess of one hundred murder scenes in order to assist the police and the defence with their investigations abd also attended the scenes of serious road traffic accidents and burglaries for the same purpose.
Professor John Hunter BA, PhD, FSA, MIFA, FFSSoc
Apart from following an extensive scheme of archaeological research excavation and survey in Scotland, John Hunter began to develop forensic archaeology in 1988. He has written nine books, including the first textbook on the subject and has undertaken research and routinely lectured to police and forensic groups ever since. He helped found the Forensic Search Advisory Group, was a lead assessor for the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP), and a member of CRFP's Incident Investigation panel. Operationally he works actively on police cases, including defence and cold case reviews, as well as war crime missions throughout the world, notably in the Falklands, the Balkans and Iraq.
He has recently been appointed a Royal Commissioner on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and has co-authored a new book on forensic archaeology. He was appointed Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Birmingham in 1996.
John Manlove BA MSc DIC PhD RFP FFSSoc
John's background is in forensic biology and as a pioneer of forensic ecology. He reports on all aspects of DNA profiling, Forensic Biology, Blood Pattern Analysis and Forensic Entomology. He is involved in the training of crime scene personnel and has been lead scientist in major cases that have covered over a dozen evidence types. John has worked overseas on a number of major enquiries in addition to casework commitments in the UK.
Kathy has worked for the Forensic Science Service and Forensic Alliance in DNA and body fluids, and marks and traces disciplines, primarily on Serious Crime and Anti-terrorist cases. She continues to provide expert opinion and attend crime scenes using expertise in contact trace evidence, mark comparison, chemical enhancement of marks and footwear tracking.
Dr W Meier-Augenstein, CChem, FRSC
Wolfram Meier-Augenstein is a Senior Lecturer in Stable Isotope Forensics at the Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification at the University of Dundee. He is also the Principal Isotope Scientist at the Scottish Crop Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a member of the British Mass Spectrometry Society. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of stable isotope technology at natural abundance level as well as at tracer lever for biomedical applications and has made contributions to instrument design as well as to several textbooks on the subject of stable isotope analytical techniques including their use in forensics. Dr Meier-Augenstein has assisted various police forces in murder enquiries with provision of forensic intelligence on human provenance based on Stable Isotope Profiles or ‘Signatures' to aid victim identification. Apart from the stable isotope analysis of human tissue he is also engaged in the stable isotope analysis of drugs and explosives. He is an executive member of the Forensic Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (FIRMS) steering group, an organisation with international membership involved in quality control and quality assurance of stable isotope data generated for and used in a forensic context. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the forensic science journal Science & Justice and of the scientific journal Bioanalysis.
Samantha Pickles BSc PGCE MFSSoc
Between 2002 and 2007 Sam was employed with Forensic Alliance Ltd/LGC Forensics in Culham, initially training as a Biology Examiner and an Entomology Scene Scientist. During this time Samantha was frequently involved with the organisation and delivery of both internal and external training. After qualifying as a Reporting Officer in Entomology, Samantha transferred to the Drugs Department as an Examiner, before leaving to pursue other interests.
Prior to joining MFL, Samantha was a Biology and Forensic Science lecturer with Oxford and Cherwell Valley College. During this time, she commenced her teacher training, whilst remaining involved with entomology research and consultancy. A keen researcher, Samantha has undertaken numerous unique projects from her time at University, and continues to do so at present. These have including genetic analysis of British Blowflies, and also obtaining human DNA profiles and toxicological information from case-related entomology specimens, with publications pending. She currently has a view to continuing her research as part of a PhD.
In addition to her work here on entomology, Sam examines many of the items which are submitted for biological and ecological examinations. She is also involved in delivering much of the training over the last few months, both in the areas of biological examination and scene protocol regarding entomology.
Alison has over twenty-five years experience as a reporting scientist specialising in the forensic examination of documents and handwriting. She joined the Questioned Documents (QD) department of the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory (MPFSL) in 1986, later transferring to the Laboratory of the Government Chemist and then to the Forensic Science Service’s Laboratory at Wetherby.
She has worked on a wide range of cases including high profile, complex and counter-terrorist cases, and given evidence in court on numerous occasions. She has also designed and delivered QD training and forensic awareness courses to members of staff and investigators.
Dr Sandiford has worked as an independent forensic science consultant since 1998. She works with Manlove Forensics as a Forensic Palynologist (pollen expert). Her research background is in geology, palynology and geochemistry and she continues her research in forensic palynology with a top forensic microfossil expert. She also has significant expertise in marks/impressions, glass, drugs, drug traces and alcohol-related casework. She is a company director based in New Zealand, which is one of the main countries leading forensic palynology.
Professor Louise Scheuer is a human anatomist with special interest in the morphology and development of the juvenile skeleton. She is the present President of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists She has worked in the field of Forensic Anthropology for over thirty years and has given evidence on human identification in coroners and criminal courts in the UK. She was a member of the Foreign and Commonwealth team investigating war crimes in Kosovo in 1999 and assisted with identification in the London tube bombings in July 2005. She was Specialist and then Lead assessor in Forensic Anthropology, a member of the Registration and Assessment Working Group and the Board of the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners. She is the author of three textbooks on the morphology and development of the juvenile skeleton and has written numerous chapters in edited books and scientific papers on forensic anthropology and human identification.
Following his academic studies within the field of metallurgy, James started work with the Metropolitan Police at their laboratory facility at Amelia Street. During this time he attended numerous crime scenes and became a very experienced reporting scientist in crime scene investigation and bloodstain pattern analysis.
He also became highly proficient in the application of chemicals used to enhance marks at scenes and in the laboratory. James is also highly competant at the recovery of footwear evidence, both using electrostatic lifting, gel lifting and chemical techniques. Further lab-based skills included the detection and recovery of biological fluids and DNA samples from serious crime and firearm exhibits in crime scene and laboratory environments.
After several years with the Metropolitan Police, James moved to Key Forensics where he trained in the examination, identification and testing of firarms, ammunition and air weapons. He also has a sound understanding of firearms and ammunition construction, operation and ballistic identification methods. He is familiar with the classification of firearms and ammunition under current UK legislation.
James has additional skills in the use of optical, scanning electron and transmission electorn microscopy, including x-ray analysis. He also has considerable experience of training staff in crime scene and laboratory evidential recovery, having delivered training to police officers and staff, forensic scientists as well as university students.
At Manlove Forensics, James reports simple DNA cases as well as all aspects of blood pattern analysis. He is training to report firearms evidence and assists in many of the evidential types we examine within this facility.
Barrie Simpson, BA (Hons) MSc MSc CertED MFSSoc
A forensic archaeologist with a further Masters Degree in forensic and biological anthropology. He has a wide experience of crime scenes, both within the UK and abroad, and further forensic experience in dealing with the aftermath of major natural disasters. He has given evidence in both the Crown Court and Coroner's Courts in the UK. As a forensic archaeologist he has assisted the British Government, the United Nations, UK police forces and the military; and also undertaken forensic missions with internationally recognised institutions such as the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) and Kenyon International Emergency Services.
An active member the Forensic Search Advisory Group (FSAG) which provides advice and assistance to UK Police forces in search, location and recovery of buried human remains and objects and Council member of the British Association for Human Identification (BAHID).
A registered Expert Advisor (EA) with the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA); a professional member of the Forensic Science Society (MFSSoc); and was one the first forensic archaeologists to be registered as forensic practitioner with the former Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP).
A qualified teacher and currently a Honorary Research Fellow in Forensic Archaeology in the Institute for Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, working with his close colleague and fellow Manlove Forensics colleague, Professor John Hunter. Together they have organised training courses in forensic archaeology for police and military investigators and provide training inputs to Manlove Forensics courses.
Neil was employed by the Forensic Science Service Birmingham Laboratory as an Assistant Forensic Scientist from January 1979 to December 2010.
He worked initially on all aspects of forensic chemistry examination in the laboratory and at scenes of crime including paint, glass, footwear and tool marks, fires, vehicle work and instrumental analytical techniques with an emphasis on gas chromatography and blood alcohol determination.
Neil is also trained in biological searching and examination techniques including blood, semen, saliva and fibres including microscopy and analysis by chromatographic and instrumental techniques enabling work to be carried out on large, complex cases that crossed disciplinary boundaries He worked within the 'Specialised Fingerprint Unit’ undertaking fingerprint casework with a remit to develop and implement a quality management system for the FSS Fingerprint Units leading to successful accreditation of them by UKAS and BSI. Listed as an auditor for internal quality audits at FSS sites.
As well as using his skills as a forensic scientist, Neil is our Quality Manager and has undertaken most of the work that was needed to take us through the process of accreditiation to ISO 17025.
Mr Tremain holds a Bachelor of Science degree with honours in science (1998). Between 1977 and 1999 he was employed by the Department of Forensic Medicine, Guy's Hospital Medical School firstly as a Senior Laboratory Scientific Officer and then promoted to Chief Scientific Officer. In 1999 he set up his own company which produces body mapping in 2D and 3D at the request of Judges, Barristers, CPS Case Workers, Murder, Investigation Teams within the Police Force nationwide and at the request of the Forensic Pathologist, weapon and wound overlay and animation of patterned injuries (in excess of 500 cases). From 2001 he has also worked as a Consultant with the National Injuries Database based at the NPIA at Wyboston Lakes. He is involved on a weekly basis in case analysis and discussion within specialist meeting, enhancement of the Database programme and advising on patterned injury and wounding. His technological expertise includes histology, diatomology, research into seminal staining, national injuries database, weapon and wound overlay and forensic graphic design.
Diatomology is one of his special areas of interest and expertise, he held the position of Chief Scientific Officer at Guy's Hospital Medical School, London for thirty-five years and, during that time, performed investigations for diatoms in several hundred cases. Many such samples came from the human organs of drowned individuals taken from the River Thames, and involved murders and suspicious deaths, in addition to suicides and accidental deaths. This facilitated a very thorough and extensive grounding in the numerous types of diatoms found in various circumstances and conditions, including freshwater (rivers, lakes), brackish water (tidal water - freshwater and seawater as found in estuaries and as far as London Bridge) and seawater samples. During his career, he also became a member of a specialist Diatomology Group of scientists, who regularly met to discuss the technical methods and standards used in the detection of diatoms in human organs, in order to advance the methodology and excellence of the discipline.
Other staff biographies are to be added to this page - please call us for details!
Tel: 0845 371 2486