Christopher Ehrhardt is currently an Associate Professor in the Forensic Science Department at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond VA. He received his PhD from UC-Santa Barbara in Earth and Environmental Sciences and completed postdoctoral appointments at the FBI Laboratory’s Research Unit (Quantico, VA) and the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland WA). At VCU, his research group studies the biochemistry, optical properties, and genetics of trace biological samples as well as front end methods for resolving cell mixtures for DNA casework.