Igor Lednev, a professor at University at Albany, has been pioneering the use of Raman spectroscopy for forensic analyses for more than a decade. In 2019, after 11 years of NIJ funding valued at $3 million, more than 60 published articles and three U.S. patents, Lednev founded SupraMEtric LLC, a spin-off company based on his novel technology.
Now, thanks to a highly competitive NSF Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant, SupraMEtric can take the next step toward turning Lednev’s technology into a forensic product for the crime lab.
SupraMEtric’s core offering is a laser-based technology that can non-destructively determine the origin of a biological stain by assigning it to a specific body fluid, with close to 100 percent accuracy. The technology is based on years of previous research from the Lednev Lab, which uses Raman spectroscopy to identify key characteristics of biologics left at crime scenes, including time since deposition, the race, sex and age group of the donor, whether the donor is a smoker, and whether the biological fluid belongs to a human or animal.
The grant will be used to create a desktop version of Lednev’s technology that can be used in a crime lab setting.
“I am very excited about the potential to screen items of crime scene evidence in situ with a non-destructive technique,” Ray Wickenheiser, director of the New York State Police Crime Lab System, told Forensic. “This has the potential to greatly streamline the evidence recognition and collection phase, while reducing risk of missing probative evidence.”
Wickenheiser has been collaborating with Lednev for years to help turn his research into real-world forensic products.
“A goal of the NYSP Crime Laboratory System is to bring the best of the world of forensic technology to solving our cases,” said Wickenheiser. “This technology represents an excellent opportunity to apply our practical forensic expertise in partnership with Lednev’s demonstrated academic and research capability, supported by the recent National Science Foundation grant.”
The NSF Small Business Technology Transfer grant is highly competitive, with the program only funding about 400 companies each year. The $256,000 grant awarded to SupraMEtric provides support for 1 year.
“There is currently a big gap that exists between applied research and technology commercialization,” said Lednev. “The NSF’s STTR program is helping to close this gap by funding start-up companies like ours. It’s exciting to see our hard work start to come to fruition. We look forward to our forensic technology soon being used as an integral part of investigations across the nation.”
Thinking ahead, Lednev said he also plans to develop a portable instrument that could be used at the scene of a crime as a next-generation item in SupraMEtric’s family of products.
Earlier this year, the Lednev Lab published a proof-of-concept study that used attenuated total reflection Fourier transform-infrared (ATR FT-IR) spectroscopy—a complementary technique to Raman spectroscopy—to rapidly differentiate human blood samples from nearly a dozen animal species.
This crime scene technology tool could prove to be key in car crash investigations when the suspect is unsure if a human or animal was struck.
“Most current techniques used for discrimination between human and animal blood cannot be done at the crime scene and also result in destruction of the sample,” said Lednev. “We instead can offer a non-destructive way to test traces of blood left behind on a suspect’s car bumper that will answer the question of its origin immediately.”
Photo: Igor Lednev holds a portable Raman spectrometer. Credit: University at Albany