Address: Department of Forensic Medicine, 57-83 Kavanagh Street, South Melbourne, 3205
Research in many areas of medicine and science that deal with the needs of the law. Specific areas include forensic and analytical toxicology covering research projects on the effect of the post mortem interval on the concentration of drugs and poisons and the phenomenon of post mortem redistribution, culpability analysis in motor vehicle fatalities and analysis of the contribution of drugs to fatal accidents, development of a national toxicology database, isolation and identification of DNA from tissues using polymerase chain reaction and other techniques, use of DNA techniques to study disease diagnosis, analysis and review of suicides with particular reference to young people and other patterns of injury in homicide, interactive learning in medicine, traumatic neuropathology, a histological approach to the ageing of injuries and studies to assist with range deterioration in gunshot wounds from common .22 calibre rifles.
The Department also maintains the national database in relation to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as a research tool for medical researchers throughout Australia.