Alabama State University's acclaimed national expert on forensic-death studies, Dr. Gulnaz Javan, is again sharing her well-respected scientific observations on cadaver death and microbial data with academic colleagues in Tennessee.
Javan, an associate professor at Alabama State University’s Forensic Sciences' Physical Sciences Department, will conduct a seminar on "death" this Wednesday (Oct. 12) at Middle Tennessee State University's Department of Biology's Forensic Science Program in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
The seminar focuses on Javan and her team’s research, which addresses the questions “What is death?” and “Is there life after death?”
“These questions have been investigated for centuries, but currently there are ambiguous applications, yet to be elucidated,” Javan said.
She says that the human postmortem microbiome has been recently explored by her laboratory studies to clarify its grey areas in order to find the "missing pieces" to the microbial puzzle of death.
"I am excited to be a researcher on the largest catalogue of sequencing and bioinformatics data of relevant microorganisms associated with internal organs, blood, skin and cadaver soil, which is supplementary with human decomposition," Javan said.
Members of Javan’s "Thanatos Lab" (thanatos is the Greek word for death) who are collaborating on this project with her are Sheree Finley, a Ph.D. student in the ASU microbiology program; Mariah Tolbert, Shannon Pittman and Jessica Carter (all students in the ASU Forensic Science program); and several other graduate and undergraduate students in the ASU College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (C-STEM).
Javan’s recent data from her Thanto's Laboratory has the potential to aid forensic investigators and detectives in solving crimes worldwide and has received wide-spread notice in many national scientific and general news publications.
Javan and Finley also are collaborating with researchers from around the world on a book titled Forensic EcoGenomics: A Seminal Discourse Using Global Studies, which is due to be published this year. The manuscript will consist of chapters from teams of renowned and emerging researchers and practitioners from Alabama State University and other schools in China, the United Kingdom, Italy and the Netherlands.
Posted By: Reginald Culpepper
Wednesday, October 11th 2017 at 5:42PM
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