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Australia Day honours for Forensic Biology and DNA guru

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26th January, 2025

NSW Health Pathology’s former Operations Director Criminalistics, Sharon Neville, has been recognised for her outstanding public service in this year’s Australia Day Honours list.

Sharon Neville has been award­ed the Pub­lic Ser­vice Medal (PSM) for her con­tri­bu­tion over many decades to the NSW Health and Jus­tice systems.

Her work head­ing up the Crim­i­nal­is­tics lab­o­ra­to­ries at the Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) at Lid­combe has made NSW a safer place by pro­vid­ing the high­est qual­i­ty foren­sic sci­ence to dis­rupt crime, min­imise the impact of illic­it drugs in the com­mu­ni­ty, sup­port the appre­hen­sion of per­pe­tra­tors and pro­vide answers for griev­ing fam­i­lies and vic­tims of crime.

Her exper­tise has been relied on by author­i­ties in NSW and sought after by oth­er juris­dic­tions around Aus­tralia and New Zealand.

A woman in a white lab coat holding a pipette working in a laboratory.
Sharon Neville in the lab­o­ra­to­ry in 2016 (Pho­to cred­it: Jonathan Ng, Dai­ly Telegraph)

Ms Neville over­saw test­ing in foren­sic biol­o­gy and DNA, illic­it drug analy­sis and chem­i­cal crim­i­nal­is­tics, sup­port­ing crim­i­nal and coro­nial inves­ti­ga­tions includ­ing sex­u­al assaults, homi­cides and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of unknown human remains, and health ini­tia­tives that alert the com­mu­ni­ty to drug harms.

She was at the fore­front of new tech­nol­o­gy and man­aged the deliv­ery of projects includ­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of a com­plete end-to-end auto­mat­ed robot­ic DNA sam­ple pro­cess­ing, and the intro­duc­tion of inno­v­a­tive approach­es such as an auto­mat­ed sperm find­er util­is­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (a first for Australia).

These projects and oth­ers have trans­formed the Foren­sic Biol­o­gy and DNA Analy­sis lab into a world-leader.

Sharon also intro­duced new DNA typ­ing meth­ods to sup­port sex­u­al assault inves­ti­ga­tions, to iden­ti­fy com­pro­mised human remains and tech­nol­o­gy to pre­dict phys­i­cal traits such as eth­nic­i­ty, hair and eye colour. Onboard­ing this tech­nol­o­gy has made FASS amongst the most advanced foren­sic biol­o­gy and DNA ser­vices in the world.

She was instru­men­tal in the response to the trag­ic Hunter Val­ley bus crash pro­vid­ing expert DNA analy­sis required to iden­ti­fy all vic­tims to ensure return to their fam­i­lies in the short­est pos­si­ble time­frame. She was also part of a team of Aus­tralian foren­sic biol­o­gists sec­ond­ed with the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Police to iden­ti­fy vic­tims of the 2004 Box­ing Day tsuna­mi in Thailand.

Sharon has stamped an indeli­ble imprint upon the foren­sic sci­ence land­scape in Aus­tralia and beyond.

Con­grat­u­la­tions from all of us here at NSW Health Pathol­o­gy on this incred­i­ble honour!

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