Developing in-situ analysis methods for energetic materials, and assessing the latter's interactions with environments and crime scenes.

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Nature of work: in-situ analysis, mass spectrometry, sampling methodologies, energetic compound metabolism. This project will be centred around the assessment of the interactions of energetic materials with their environment, including bodily fluids and other forensic evidence, and the resulting implications for their detection and evidential reliability.Area: Analytical science, energetic compound synthesis, metabolomics; forensics - crime scene and evidencePotential implications: This interdisciplinary PhD project will bring together cutting-edge direct analysis methods and synthetic chemistry in order to develop in-situ analysis techniques for the determination of energetic materials in bio-samples and residues (e.g. fingermarks). This will support forensic investigations into the clandestine manufacture and handling of novel and/or improvised explosives. The cellular metabolism of the energetic materials and their synthetic precursors will also be studied to determine whether the presence of characteristic metabolites could potentially be used to link an individual with the synthesis of explosives. As such, the work will impact on our capability to counter terrorist activity and planning.Brief description: The project will involve synthesising improvised energetic materials and simulants for known explosives. Energetic materials such as TATP will be deposited in biofluid samples and residues on surfaces, before characterisation with in-situ mass spectrometry and/or ion mobility spectrometry in order to investigate how they persist in different biological sample matrices in the context of forensic trace analysis. Novel sampling and extraction strategies will be developed to ensure effective retrieval from different surfaces and materials. The metabolism of different explosives, simulants and synthetic precursors will be studied using in-vitro assays with liver microsomes in order to produce metabolites of explosive compounds; these can then be combined with biofluids to evaluate their diagnostic potential as markers of exposure during the synthesis of improvised explosives.The project will be jointly supervised by Prof Paul Kelly, Dr George Weaver and Dr Jim Reynolds in the Department of Chemistry, and involves chemical synthesis, mass spectrometry and metabolomics analysis. The student will work across labs from all these sub-disciplines in order to gain a truly multidisciplinary training in novel forensic approaches.