Concord’s new electron microscope arrives to improve the diagnosis of renal disease

FASS Operations Director, Criminalistics, Sharon Neville is taking a well-earned break from the daily grind, farewelling colleagues after 35 years.

Sharon Neville describes as a “light bulb moment” the day she saw a job ad for a foren­sic biol­o­gist based at Glebe in 1989.

“I had stud­ied Nat­ur­al Sci­ence at Trin­i­ty Col­lege Ire­land, and when I came to Aus­tralia I began work­ing as a research assis­tant look­ing at cell mark­ers at Roy­al Prince Alfred Hos­pi­tal. I saw this adver­tise­ment for a posi­tion as a foren­sic biol­o­gist and I knew that was what I want­ed,” she said.

“The stars aligned and I was offered the job. I cried after the inter­view as I thought I had blown it!”

Of course, she hadn’t blown it, and it marked the start of a long and suc­cess­ful career at what is now NSW Health Pathology’s Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) in Lid­combe. With­in four years Sharon was a senior Foren­sic Biol­o­gist and she now heads up the FASS Crim­i­nal­is­tics lab­o­ra­to­ries as Oper­a­tions Director.

The capa­bil­i­ties of foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries have changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the course of Sharon’s career, expand­ing how sci­ence can be used to assist in police investigations.

“When I start­ed as a Foren­sic Biol­o­gist, DNA was not even in our toolk­it! If there was blood or semen, we could deter­mine ABO type and also used a few poly­mor­phic pro­tein mark­ers,” she explains.

“There was high excite­ment in the lab if we could achieve a sta­tis­tic of 1 in 100 using these meth­ods to indi­cate that while the blood on the cloth­ing matched some­one, 1 in 100 of peo­ple ran­dom­ly select­ed would also be expect­ed to have the same com­bi­na­tion of ABO and pro­tein types detected.

“With DNA, the sta­tis­tics have to be capped at 1 in 100 bil­lion as the real num­ber is too big to artic­u­late! But we did what we could at the time.

“Our world changed with DNA. The ear­ly meth­ods were chal­leng­ing as they required a lot of DNA and decent qual­i­ty. The process took a long time and used radioac­tive sub­stances. After a few iter­a­tions of dif­fer­ent test­ing meth­ods, in about 1998 we start­ed to car­ry out DNA test­ing and com­pare DNA pro­files from crime sam­ples to nom­i­nat­ed per­sons of interest.

“A big change came in 2000 with the com­mence­ment of the NSW DNA data­base which meant we could search DNA pro­files from crime sam­ples against the sus­pect and offend­er pro­files on the data­base and pro­vide police with cold ‘hits’.

“This was a gamechang­er and DNA pro­fil­ing became a rou­tine inves­ti­ga­tion tool. The ear­ly DNA test­ing that need­ed a blood­stain the size of a 20-cent piece was now super­seded by test­ing that could gen­er­ate pro­files from a bare­ly vis­i­ble pin prick blood­stain. Advance­ments con­tin­ued and recov­ery of DNA pro­files from a hand­ful of skin cells is now unremarkable.”

Impact of robotics and automation

Sharon remem­bers when she start­ed out in foren­sic biol­o­gy, spend­ing hours peer­ing down a micro­scope look­ing for sperm on stained slides in sex­u­al assault investigations.

“I remem­ber feel­ing dizzy! But these days, the biol­o­gists in our evi­dence recov­ery unit have a quick scan for a cou­ple of min­utes and if they don’t imme­di­ate­ly see sperm, they move the slide to the auto­mat­ed ‘sperm searcher’.

“This instru­ment can scan slides, iden­ti­fy pos­si­ble sperm and rank them in order of like­li­hood of being a sperm. It has been ‘trained’ to iden­ti­fy sperm using AI tech­nol­o­gy and is an absolute work­horse in the evi­dence recov­ery unit.”

The automa­tion jour­ney for exam­in­ing DNA began in 2009 and by 2014 each of the steps in the process was automated.

This sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced the time required for pro­cess­ing, mean­ing DNA ana­lysts could move to ‘high­er order’ activities.

“The automa­tion is some­thing we have always been very proud of at FASS and it is so excit­ing for the team to be now revamp­ing the entire automa­tion sys­tem to bring on board the lat­est in auto­mat­ed plat­forms,” Sharon said.

“This will bring enor­mous ben­e­fits to the ser­vice and means we have one of the high­est capac­i­ties in the world for case­work samples.”

 

Sharon’s cur­rent role involves over­see­ing the Illic­it Drug Analy­sis Unit (IDAU) and Chem­i­cal Crim­i­nal­is­tics Unit in addi­tion to the Foren­sic Biology/DNA unit.

“I’ll always con­sid­er Foren­sic Biology/DNA my ‘home team’ giv­en the decades I spent involved in this area, but the work done by each of the units pro­vides such val­ue to the coro­nial and jus­tice sys­tems and it is very reward­ing to be part of deliv­er­ing this ser­vice to the community.

“In recent years the expan­sion of the work car­ried out by the IDAU beyond the legal aspects of drug seizures to drug sur­veil­lance lead­ing to pub­lic health alerts about dan­ger­ous sub­stances in the com­mu­ni­ty has been some­thing I have been very proud to play a part in.

“There is nev­er a dull moment, there is always an ‘inter­est­ing’ case hap­pen­ing, whether it is how to extract illic­it sub­stances from a pile of yoga mats to the appli­ca­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy to unsolved cold cases.

“How won­der­ful it has been to nev­er stop learn­ing, the pace of advance­ments in sci­ence is staggering!”

Most memorable cases

Sharon reflects on some of the high-pro­file cas­es she’s been involved in over the years, many of which were solved as a result of DNA analy­sis of crime scene evidence.

The Lin fam­i­ly mur­ders “In 2009, five mem­bers of a fam­i­ly were found dead in a Syd­ney home. It was notable as a cru­cial DNA pro­file was extreme­ly com­plex and it was the ear­ly days of using soft­ware tools to inter­pret DNA. There were mul­ti­ple tri­als. I gave evi­dence in the lead up to the first tri­al in rela­tion to expert soft­ware systems.”

Michelle Bright “The 1999 mur­der of a 17-year-old girl in Gul­go­ng. Lots of work done over the years using many advances in tech­nol­o­gy includ­ing work over­seas. It was a case that always stayed in my head and there were many case reviews over the years. I was real­ly relieved when there was a con­fes­sion and con­vic­tion in 2023.”

Pia Navi­di “One of the first mur­der cas­es I worked on. The 1992 aggra­vat­ed sex­u­al assault and mur­der of 37-year-old woman found blud­geoned to death in the Roy­al Nation­al Park with a 15kg rock. I remem­ber the rock vivid­ly. This case was worked on over decades using dif­fer­ent DNA test­ing once it became avail­able and final­ly in 2014 there were con­vic­tions for the murder.”

Sharon says a key expe­ri­ence in her career would have to be being deployed in Novem­ber 2005 to Thai­land to assist in Dis­as­ter Vic­tim Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion work fol­low­ing the tsuna­mi on Box­ing Day 2004.

“It was an expe­ri­ence I will nev­er for­get. Even 10 months after the tsuna­mi, the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion process was still ongo­ing. It was an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with experts from around the world, all ded­i­cat­ing them­selves to the process of find­ing out who the vic­tims were.”

Most of all, Sharon says she will miss her col­leagues at FASS, some of whom she’s worked along­side since that first day in June 1989.

Her col­leagues recent­ly held a farewell event, where Sharon was pre­sent­ed with an Abo­rig­i­nal art­work that was cre­at­ed for NSW Health Pathol­o­gy by artist, Elsie Randall.

She was also pre­sent­ed with a com­men­da­tion by Rashelle Con­roy, Assis­tant Com­mis­sion­er, Foren­sic Evi­dence and Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Com­mand, NSW Police.

FASS Direc­tor Michael Symonds said Sharon’s pro­fes­sion­al­ism and exper­tise will be sore­ly missed.

“Sharon has made an excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tion to the NSW health and jus­tice sys­tems over her decades of work here at NSW Health Pathology’s Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice,” he said.

“Her lega­cy will be hav­ing trans­formed the FASS Foren­sic Biology/DNA lab­o­ra­to­ry into a world-leader. But her col­leagues will remem­ber her as a col­lab­o­ra­tive, kind and inclu­sive leader, who always got the best out of the peo­ple she worked with.

“While she will be missed, we all wish her a fab­u­lous retire­ment and hope she can enjoy some qual­i­ty time with friends and fam­i­ly,” Michael said.

As for Sharon’s retire­ment plans, no prizes for guess­ing she plans to spend as much time as pos­si­ble trav­el­ing back and forth to Ire­land to spend time with the Irish con­tin­gent of her family.

“I am also hop­ing to spend more time with my two gor­geous grand­daugh­ters in Wollongong.

“As for slow­ing down, I don’t think I’ll have any trou­ble doing that. I recent­ly start­ed prac­tic­ing Tai Chi, which is about as slow as it gets, and it’s suit­ing me just fine!”