Reston, Va. (March 2018) - Parabon® NanoLabs, a vertically integrated DNA technology company that develops next-gen forensic and therapeutic products, is pleased to announce that Dr. Ellen Greytak, Director of Bioinformatics at Parabon, will be a featured speaker in the webinar "Emerging DNA Techniques," presented by the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), on Wednesday, March 14, 2018 from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. EST. This webinar will highlight innovative technologies for use in DNA forensics. "Emerging DNA Techniques" will feature presentations from Cybergenetics, Genetic Genealogy and Parabon NanoLabs.
Dr. Greytak will discuss the benefits of DNA phenotyping when applied to criminal investigations through the use of Parabon's revolutionary new forensic DNA analysis service, Snapshot®, which accurately predicts the physical appearance and ancestry of an unknown person from DNA. It can also determine kinship between DNA samples out to six degrees of relatedness. She will discuss how the service can aid in generating investigative leads, narrowing suspect lists and identifying unknown remains, and review actual cases where Snapshot has provided useful information to investigators.
Dr. Greytak is the Director of Bioinformatics at Parabon NanoLabs and lead scientist for the development of Snapshot DNA Phenotyping technology. She is an expert in using comparative genomics to study complex traits. She earned a Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University, where she was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Research Fellowship, an NIH Genetics and Genomics Training Grant and the James Mills Peirce Graduate Fellowship.
SAKI provides funding through a competitive grant program to support the jurisdictional reform of approaches to sexual assault cases resulting from evidence found in sexual assault kits (SAKs) that have never been submitted to a crime laboratory. SAKI is administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) and aims to create a coordinated community response that ensures just resolution to sexual assault cases through (1) a comprehensive and victim-centered approach, (2) jurisdictional capacity building to prevent high numbers of unsubmitted SAKs in the future, and (3) supporting the investigation and prosecution of cases for which SAKs were previously unsubmitted. To find out more, visit www.sakitta.org.
About Parabon NanoLabs, Inc:
Parabon® NanoLabs is a vertically integrated DNA technology company that develops next-generation forensic and therapeutic products, which leverage the enormous power of DNA. Staffed by a uniquely qualified team of scientists and technologists, with expertise ranging from bioinformatics and chemistry to computer science and pharmacology, Parabon is bringing to market revolutionary new products and services made possible by recent advances in DNA sequencing, analysis and manufacturing technologies.
