Mission, Rationale, Activities and Service

The William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine is a joint initiative of the Colleges of Medicine and Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. It was created in 1999 by the Board of Regents to honor the memory of Dr. William R. Maples, an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of forensic anthropology.

Mission Statement

The mission of Maples Center is fourfold - Education, Research, Service, and Outreach. The Center utilizes its extensive expertise in forensic medicine to provide comprehensive services and innovative programs that relate to medicolegal death investigation. Multidisciplinary integration of services, technologies, training, and research address contemporary forensic issues. The Center has the responsibility of maintaining central laboratories for diagnostic anthropology and toxicology including the examination and diagnosis of forensic cases for local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, medical examiners, and attorneys. Educational programs are provided to law enforcement, medical examiners, and other healthcare professionals throughout the state. The Center has plans to develop a graduate program in forensic medicine.

Rationale

Forensic sciences at the University of Florida had been distributed between two major laboratories (The C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory and the Diagnostic Referral Laboratory) and a number of other departments including pathology, anthropology and entomology. These laboratories and the various sub-units have been integrated into the Maples Center resulting in several advantages. The Maples Center is the first center in the State University System focused on Forensic Medicine. It uniquely provides medicolegal capabilities for education, research, service and outreach for the benefit of university students and faculty, forensic science professionals, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, and citizens of the State of Florida. The Maples Center works cooperatively with other programs to integrate cross-disciplinary knowledge in all areas of the forensic sciences.

Activities

The Maples Center creates an exciting exploratory environment for approaches and perspectives that transcend traditional forensic science research and education. It focuses scholarship, policy and methods development across all available media, scales, and systems to create new educational, research, service, and outreach opportunities in Forensic Medicine. The Maples Center is organized as a collaborative network that encourages and coordinates multi-disciplinary scientific inquiry among its community of scholars and practitioners. New educational opportunities have been developed and provided to the novice as well as the forensic professional. Rotations in forensic anthropology and toxicology will be advertised and accredited with the governing bodies of national societies. Medical students, residences and fellows at the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory have completed successful rotations over the past two years. The Maples Center encourages partnerships at all levels with internal and external scholars, practitioners, communities, institutions of governance and law enforcement in order to advance the forensic sciences. Maples Center activities address societal problems locally, in the State of Florida, nationally, and internationally.

In addition to maintaining the research and service missions of the Maples Center, another goal is the development of a graduate program in Forensic Medicine at the masters and doctoral levels that are not presently available in the SUS. Currently, the SUS offers the masters degree in forensic sciences at the University of Central Florida. This program focuses on developing an expertise in fire and explosives, and thus chemistry is their primary educational unit. There is no program in the State of Florida, other than the Maples Center, with an emphasis on forensic medicine. The Maples Center unifies the existing programs (anthropology, pathology, chemistry, nursing, and others), and creates a much requested degree tract. All educational programs, workshops, and international symposia sponsored by the Maples Center are of exceptional quality in order to attract the best scholars at every level to bring fresh and multi-faceted approaches and insight to the widest range of contemporary medico-legal issues. The Center has been tasked with the development of the Florida Emergency Mortuary Operations Response System (FEMORS) by the Florida Department of Health in conjunction with the State's Division of Emergency Operations. The Center has developed a state-oriented plan including training for use in a mass fatality incident. For more information on FEMORS visit www.femors.org.

Education

The Maples Center was established to expand existing programs in anthropology and pathology to include specializations in forensic toxicology and anthropology. Several new courses are being added to the current curriculum in the departments of Anthropology and Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, Nursing, and other health-related fields. For example, additional courses specific to anthropology include quantitative research methods in forensic anthropology, forensic osteology, archaeological methods in forensic anthropology, and anatomy for physical anthropologists. Similarly, new courses in toxicology include analytical methods in forensic toxicology and principals of pharmacology and toxicology for forensic toxicologists. These courses would be open to all graduate students and advanced undergraduates, and would serve to compliment present training in anthropology and toxicology at the University of Florida.

An introductory course in forensic medicine has been developed and is currently offered through the Department of Anthropology. This course is being offered to all interested undergraduate students, and is cross-listed by anthropology, criminology and pathology and laboratory medicine. Other courses are being developed and faculty has been identified to present these courses as early as Spring 2004. In addition, Founding Faculty from departments across campus will present courses in their areas of expertise (e.g., forensic engineering, forensic radiology, human biomechanics, and environmental medicine) to fulfill elective requirements in the formal degree programs.

Training and outreach education are coordinated with basic and applied research in order to make a substantial contribution towards meeting state and national needs for broadly trained forensic scientists, teachers, technicians, and professionals. The Maples Center's educational programs will support the mission of the University of Florida and the SUS to provide citizens of the State of Florida with the broadest possible benefits and opportunities for the future.

Research

The Maples Center will enable researchers from diverse fields across campus to collaborate on projects that will address contemporary issues in forensic medicine. There are many new and exciting areas of research currently being examined by partners in the Center. The UFDRL Forensic Toxicology Laboratory and the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory are attempting to discover the preservation rate of illegal substances such as cocaine and heroin in human bone. A proposal examining the utility of ground penetrating radar to contemporary forensic anthropology issues is being prepared for submission to UF and the U.S. Department of Energy, and reflects collaboration between Anthropology and Soil and Water Sciences. New areas of research in forensic medicine are being examined which include developing a digital graphic database of skeletal lesions and trauma, three-dimensional graphical interfaces, and use of improved methods of non-invasive data recording of soil stratigraphy. The large 35mm micrographic library of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory is currently being preserved via digital scanning. The production of a CD ROM library is being proposed to several resources. It will make this library and graphic interface available as an educational and reference software package. Three-dimensional graphic facial reproduction and the aging processes are new technologies, which are under development with Paul Edwards, M.D., Department of Surgery, UF. A meeting with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children (Washington, DC) has been held, and we are proposing research with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to capture the necessary data for production of software applicable to missing children who have aged. This application is a much-needed tool in the law enforcement field. The C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory has been in the forefront in the development and use of facial reconstruction on skeletal materials (and on synthetic reproductions), as well as video-superimposition of photographs of subjects and cranial remains. These procedures are useful in identification of missing or unknown persons, and also identification of crime suspects (e.g., current photo with surveillance camera photo). These procedures will be continued, and constantly evaluated and improved with the greater capabilities afforded through the William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine. Other projects include using magnetometers and infrared to improve searches for clandestine graves. Future collaborations between graduate students and founding members will be facilitated by the incorporation of the Maples Center into the program of graduate studies at the University of Florida.

The Center is developing a web-based database to merge data on missing, exploited, and endangered persons, with data from unidentified human remains from the State of Florida. FL-RAPID will serve all 23 medical examiner districts and law enforcement agencies in the state. Data will be integrated with information maintained by FCIC and NCIC. Medical examiner offices and criminal justice systems will have access to the database. The Center is seeking funding for the expansion of FL-RAPID. Merging FL-RAPID with other existing databases and adding a DNA component are future goals.

Service

The training of forensic specialists, medical examiners, and law enforcement personnel is accomplished by the organization and presentation of accredited courses at various times throughout the calendar year. The presentation of courses provides automatic feedback to Maples Center faculty. This comes in the form of evaluations of materials presented as well as critique of teaching methods. Moreover, interactions with practicing forensic scientists provide course instructors the opportunity to develop new research themes based on current issues in the forensic sciences. This creates a continuous loop between forensic practitioners, researchers, and academicians. Faculty and center members are able to use the resources of the Maples Center to offer topical programs lasting from one day to multi-week residential courses. The staff of the Maples Center will serve as course-directors in the planning, advertising, budgeting, and staffing of these courses. The need for topical courses in crime-scene recovery, toxicological methods, forensic anthropology, and other innovative forensic methods has been repeatedly called for by Florida's Medical Examiners, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and various local law enforcement agencies. These courses are being advertised nationwide to attract students from all regions of the country. The University of Florida has excellent resources, facilities, and faculty to make these offerings successful ventures. Both Center Directors have prior experience as course directors for accredited courses in the U.S. and Internationally.

Outreach

Lectures and programs in the various fields of forensic medicine are available to the surrounding community. Founding members of the Maples Center and their students are available to the Gainesville and University Police Departments, Sheriff's departments and associations and will cooperate with their ongoing community programs. Several founding members of the Maples Center are working in the community in various activities, and incorporating their energies more broadly into such programs. The C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory has been working with superior officers in the Gainesville Police Department in their victims awareness programs, and their cold-case coalition. Additional activities include the participation of anthropology faculty in the development of health maintenance facilities for the Eastside of Gainesville.