Fourth Annual DNA Grantees' Workshop

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

AFTERNOON SESSION

Closing Comments
Lisa Forman
Biography

DR. FORMAN: Thanks. I'm going to make a few closing comments. I promise to be brief, but for the record, I'd like to summarize this excellent workshop and just remind you of what we've been through during the past 3 days.

We started out talking about the President's DNA Initiative. It's our dream that as much of it gets funded as possible, and we'll know more about that by September [2003]. If in fact this initiative is successful in getting both authorized and appropriated, it will stimulate DNA research and development. It includes a lot of money for training—for training forensic scientists, legal professionals, medical professionals, and law enforcement personnel.

It provides legislation to increase the analysis of DNA to not only reduce backlogs, but to also deal with your current casework, and it also supports the development of a forensic commission.

You've heard a number of research update briefings. I hope that what you've heard is that there is some research ready to be delivered to you for use as tools, and we've certainly heard your points about your need to have these tools appropriately commercialized. We will do whatever we can to make sure that that happens.

One of the ideas that came up during the fruitful discussions during the day and even after the meetings every day was the idea that the researchers could actually be putting into their grants the kind of funding that they would need to support the collaborations between the practitioner community. I want to go back to that idea of privacy and human subjects testing.

If the researchers are initiating support on behalf of that part of the project, then there's no problem with the practitioner participating. We urge you to participate. If the practitioners are supplying researchers with reagents, including human DNA for their analyses, then there's no problem as long as those samples were not sent using any Federal funds.

There has to be a disconnect between your NIJ grant to the practitioners and the kind of research that's going on. We don't ever wish to consider controlling anything that you do, but we have to monitor your Federal funds within the law. That's why we need you to be cognizant of the fact that when you are practitioning, you are not required to have any additional human subjects testing special conditions associated with your award, but when you are researching, you should have already taken care of that.

So researchers who wish to have practitioners participate need to protect those practitioners from violating the terms of their cooperative agreements with the Federal Government via NIJ, and practitioners who wish to participate in research—and again, that's really the dream or goal of this conference, to have everything all wedded together—need to be aware of when they're acting in the role of a researcher, in that they need to be doing that outside the context of their backlog reduction, no-suspect, or crime laboratory improvement grants.

So you have heard about the development of cat STR (short tandem repeat) databases and a number of cat STRs that can be used in specialized cases. You've heard about different methods for quantitation of DNA. Oh, I don't know how you would survive without a Quantiblot. I just can't imagine what you would do without it. It's so pleasurable to be sitting on the witness stand and saying, yes, I got no result on that, or yes, I got a lot of DNA on this. I don't know what you'll do without that.

You've heard about a number of standard reference materials: the mitochondrial DNA sequencing material, the Y-chromosome work, and the materials for automating STR mixtures and validating expert systems.

So those are the kinds of near-term results that we are happy to present to you right now. We are also happy to present to you the tools for tomorrow. For example, the gene polymorphism and human pigmentation talk by Dr. Brilliant, the skeletal evidence typing, STR multiplexes; and ongoing projects, such as assessing damaged DNA, SNP detection of degraded DNA, and nanotechnology, including chips and floppy disks; and the very interesting work that was done on the marijuana database.

All of these are tools that we hope you'll be able to incorporate into your tool kits, if not today, perhaps tomorrow.

So I just wanted to thank you again for your kind attention and support. It's been very rewarding.

I would also like to announce that next year's meeting will be here at the Omni Shoreham.

Lois Tully will be keeping you apprised of what time of year that will be, but it's likely to be around the same time of year.

I'll do my final housekeeping tasks and then turn over the microphone to Lois Tully, who organized this entire meeting with the help of Mackenzie Robertson and Janelle Buchanan. I think they did a superb job, not only with this meeting but with the research that Lois has been tending to as her job as program manager for this program. I applaud them.

I'd also like to thank our conference supporters, Brandi and Andrea from ILJ (Institute for Law and Justice). I think they did a wonderful job.

And I would remind you to please give them your yellow evaluation forms. As you can tell, we try very hard to make these conferences what you want them to be, and so we're willing to listen to any ideas you might have that will make them better.

Lois.

DR. TULLY: This will just take 5 more minutes, I promise. First of all, after hearing Lisa's talk today, as the last Federal employee in our group, the first thing I said was, hmm, ITA.

And the second thing I thought was hmm, can I have Lisa's office? But I guess now we know that that's already going to be taken by Kevin Lothridge. Maybe someday I'll actually get a door on my office; I'm looking forward to that day.

I just want to tell you a few things and then John Butler and Steve and I have something else we want to present to Lisa. I met Lisa in 1988 or 1989. I was working at Cellmark Diagnostics. Before Lisa started, we heard that we were getting a new Ph.D. who worked with birds. Hence, we gave Lisa the name "Bird Lady" because we couldn't remember her name. We would say, when does the bird lady start? We were waiting to see this bird lady.

So she finally started and we realized that she actually didn't like working with birds. She much preferred monkeys. Well, we also knew she liked working with people, so we were glad about that.

I learned an enormous amount from her during my days at Cellmark. She encouraged me to go back to school and work toward my Ph.D. I always loved genetics and that was her background, too, so I'm grateful for that.

Out of all the people at Cellmark, we also shared something else: I think we were the only two that lived here in the District. Lisa lived in the trendy, bohemian, artsy area of Adams-Morgan, which is pretty close by to where we are today, and I lived in Dupont Circle.

Lisa shared an apartment with a kinkajou, which is kind of like a raccoon-koala-bear-looking kind of thing. I remember walking into her apartment and there would be this thing climbing up this fence and staring down at you. She used to drive me home and I used to complain about how hard it was to meet an eligible guy living in the Dupont Circle area of D.C. Anyone who's local will get the irony in that statement. But I used to complain about my Ukrainian boyfriend whose family wouldn't accept me because I wasn't Ukrainian. Actually, she just told me a few weeks ago that she never really liked him—albeit 15 years later.

DR. FORMAN: I wanted to make sure he was really out of the picture.

DR. TULLY: But there was another big thing that came out of me getting my Ph.D. Halfway through my program, I was attending a fundraising event for cystic fibrosis, and I met the man of my dreams, who I eventually married. He was actually an accountant. He was there to try and meet girls. But it worked for me, so I'm also grateful for that.

So I owe Lisa a lot professionally and personally. We were sitting around talking today and trying to think about what we will remember Lisa by. We put together a few what I call Lisa-isms. Some we can't read. We tried to come up with 10. We didn't quite make it to 10. And some of them we'll understand, but you may not.

Something she said to me earlier today, that when I go in her office with my ideas she would just say to me: "Just tell me what I think." So I've gotten I think better at that, and it's helped build up my confidence.

Something we looked forward to hearing from Lisa every morning when she arrived was: "Anybody going to Starbucks?" So we're going to miss that one, too.

Something you told me a long time ago, you probably don't even remember, was you said: "The secret to staying young is to dye your hair and lie about your age." Now that I'm wearing bifocals and highlighting my hair an awful lot, I know what she means by that.

Let's see. I don't know what this one means, but: "My spider sense is tingling." Actually, Thurston [Bryant] said you actually stole that from him, so I don't know.

I think that Janelle [Buchanan] gave this one to us: "Take ownership of your program; know it like you know your mother." I never actually heard that one.

Let's see. Something she said to me and she's also said it to specific grantees in the audience: "We're going to jail." One day on the phone a grantee told us what he would actually do with his earmark, which was contrary to what the law said he had to do with his earmark, to which Lisa replied, "We will go to jail." So she kind of got her message across pretty clearly with that one.

I guess the last one, which I'll always try and keep in mind, is, "It's better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission," although we have to use that one selectively.

DR. FORMAN: That was only for government work.

DR. TULLY: Did I leave any out?

We don't want to say goodbye, but we do want to say so long, hurry back. I thank you for helping me grow professionally, and I could only hope one day to have the vision that Lisa has. I mean, I should be so lucky. So I figure on Monday as she's leaving I'll be holding onto her ankles and she'll be kind of pulling away from me. And if that doesn't work, I'll trip her while she's trying to get on the elevator, and maybe I'll take her car keys. We'll have to think of something.

Now, where's John [Morgan]? John, why don't you just come up here and say a few things.

MR. MORGAN: This is a card that a number of people have signed. Those who haven't had a chance to sign it are welcome to sign it. But we wanted to give this to Lisa in thanks her for all that she has done with NIJ.

DR. FORMAN: Thank you so much. I thank you all for your kind words.

When I call on each of you to organize a run for Rett Syndrome, you'll say: God, when is she going back to the government?

Thank you. Have safe journeys home.