Best of the Week: Celebrating National Forensic Science Week

National Forensic Science Week took place this week, and Spectroscopy celebrated the occasion by putting together an interactive e-book that highlights how spectroscopic techniques are being used in forensic science. Also, associate editorial director Jerome Workman Jr. wrote a piece about the top 10 articles in August, and a recently conducted SciX interview with Ji-Xin Cheng discusses advancements in coherent Raman microscopy toward single-molecule detection.

This is the Best of the Week.

This week marked National Forensic Science Week, running September 20th through 26th. To celebrate, Spectroscopy released a digital e-book exploring how spectroscopic techniques support forensic analysis.1 Highlights include tracing vinyl wraps back to manufacturers, identifying human bone using handheld infrared paired with neural networks, detecting cocaine through sealed evidence bags, and spotting gunshot residue from nontoxic ammunition with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and machine learning.¹ Portable, smarter instruments are increasingly moving this kind of analysis directly into the field.¹

Next, associate editorial director Jerome Workman Jr. rounded up the ten most-viewed Spectroscopy and LCGC articles from August, ranked by DOI page views. Brian C. Smith's Infrared Spectroscopy of Polymers series dominated the list, claiming five spots covering polyurethanes, polyethylene, hydrocarbon polymers, polyesters, and pendant ester polymers.² Rounding out the list was a “Chemometrics in Spectroscopy” column on decimal versus binary spectral data representation, an HPLC method for measuring trimethylamine in fish oil softgels, Workman and Mark's review of artificial intelligence (AI) in spectroscopy, and a piece on the multi-attribute method for biopharmaceutical characterization.²

For Tutorial Tuesday, NASA Ames postdoctoral fellow Pavithraa Sundararajan, fresh off a presentation at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2026 Meeting in Chicago, explains how Raman microspectroscopy characterizes extraterrestrial minerals, complementing infrared spectroscopy as a nondestructive technique.³

And finally, Ji-Xin Cheng, recipient of the Charles Mann Award for Applied Raman Spectroscopy at this year's SciX conference, discusses his laboratory's work pushing coherent Raman microscopy toward single-molecule detection.⁴ Cheng’s team is using stimulated Raman photothermal microscopy to image single proteins, targeting nanomolar sensitivity at sub-micron resolution, with an eye toward clinical diagnostics down the road.⁴

And that’ll do it for Best of the Week. Thanks for reading, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next week.

References

1. Wetzel, W.; Workman, Jr., J. Celebrating National Forensic Science Week. Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/celebrating-national-forensic-science-week (accessed September 21, 2026).
2. Workman, Jr., J. Spectroscopy Top 10 Articles of the Month (August 2026). Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/spectroscopy-top-10-articles-of-the-month-august-2026- (accessed September 22, 2026).
3. Sundararajan, P.; Wetzel, W. Tutorial Tuesday: How Raman Microspectroscopy Can Characterize Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/tutorial-tuesday-how-raman-microspectroscopy-can-characterize-polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbons (accessed September 23, 2026).
4. Cheng, J.-X.; Wetzel, W. Advancing Confocal Raman Microscopy Toward Single-Molecule Sensitivity. Spectroscopy Online, 2026. https://www.spectroscopyonline.com/view/advancing-confocal-raman-microscopy-toward-single-molecule-sensitivity (accessed September 23, 2026).