Progress in Forensic Genetics 14

The 25th Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics was celebrated in Melbourne. The ‘most liveable city’ played host to the congress with Professor Adrian Linacre from Flinders University as the congress President and Dr Linzi Wilson-Wilde as the Vice President. The following proceedings have been reviewed and accepted for publication as 2 page extended abstracts to allow the presenters of the accepted abstracts to discuss their findings in more detail. This supplementary edition has been edited by Adrian Linacre and Professor Niels Morling, Vice President of the ISFG, Director and Chairman of the Department of Forensic Medicine Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. We appreciate that it is difficult to keep to the two page limit, but due to the large number of worthy submissions it was necessary to keep to a limit. Further, it is not possible to review the submissions in the same way as editions of FSI: Genetics.

The 3 day congress, from the 4 to 6 September, included 57 oral presentations and 312 posters. In addition there were six invited talks that set the themes for the sessions. These were new technologies, body fluid typing, lineage markers, wildlife forensic science, interpretation of complex mixtures and SNP testing for both ancestry and phenotypic purposes. The highlight of the opening ceremony was a presentation from Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys. Many will have not heard Alec Jeffreys speak before, but he always has a message worth listening to. Niels Morling provided light relief in homage to the 25th congress with a history of the ISFG.