Research Lab: Eduardoff

Dr. Mayra Eduardoff joined the Department of Forensic Science as an Assistant Professor in 2023. She received a Bachelor of Science in Biology specializing in Microbiology, as well as a Master of Science in Molecular Biology from the Leopold Franzens University of Innsbruck in Austria. She was then awarded a Doctoral Fellowship in Biomedicine at the Laboratory of Sensory Cell Biology and Organogenesis, Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, where she completed one year before deciding to switch to a PhD position with Dr. Walther Parson at the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute, she was hired as a Forensic Identification Coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tbilisi, Georgia, and subsequently as the Science & Technology Program Officer at the International Commission on Missing Persons in Mexico, before moving to The Netherlands to become the Head of Research & Validation and later the Head of the DNA Laboratories for ICMP.

Her research experience in the field of forensic biology is extensive and ranges from forensic genetics for human identification, ancestry, and phenotype prediction, to exploring alternative DNA typing technologies such as massively parallel sequencing and continuous improvements in DNA extraction methods from highly degraded human remains. Her interests extend beyond the laboratory to include statistical approaches for large-scale identification events, such as mass disasters, and bioinformatics for DNA sequencing analysis.