International Association of Forensic Sciences (IAFS) Meeting

August 21-25, 2017
Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel| Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Luna Innovations is presenting at the International Association of Forensic Sciences (IAFS) triennial meeting in Toronto in August 2017. 

The IAFS is a worldwide association of forensic professionals and of academic researchers in various forensic disciplines.  The IAFS meeting brings these people together to exchange ideas, learn new methods, and learn about state of the art technologies that make forensic science faster, cheaper, and more accurate than before.  The 2017 IAFS conference will be held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel in downtown Toronto, and the meeting will focus on multidisciplinary collaboration in forensic sciences to best support the pursuit of justice and human rights. 

Luna Innovations will be presenting on their new dissolvable forensic swab technology.  While sterile swabs are routinely used in forensic biological evidence gathering, there are critical limitations to the existing products and methods used.  While existing swabs work well to adsorb biological material from a variety of surfaces, the biological material remains partially entrapped in the swab fibers preventing it from presenting itself for downstream DNA analysis.  Luna has addressed this limitation with a dissolvable swab technology.  Luna’s swabs are created with cellulose acetate nanofibers to provide a high-surface area durable swab material that is insoluble in water and other common solvents, but completely dissolves in buffers compatible with DNA extraction.  Using this technology, Luna can provide assurance to forensic investigators that 100% biological evidence collected is available for extraction and analysis

Please join Blaine Butler and Nikolai Braun from Luna on Thursday, August 24 at posters 256 and 426 to learn more about the dissolving swab technology, and to pick up some sample dissolving swabs to try.