How Students Should Prepare for Forensic Science Careers

In this episode of “Pathways in Spectroscopy,” Tom Spudich, who is a Director of the Forensic Sciences Master’s Program and Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, emphasizes the importance of developing problem-solving and critical thinking skills in spectroscopy, particularly in pre-college and early college education.

Spudich suggests that young researchers should engage with unique situations to enhance these skills and utilize available resources, including artificial intelligence (AI), to aid in answering questions. While AI can provide information, it should not be relied upon to generate answers; instead, it should be used to help formulate a path to address research hypotheses or questions.

Tom Spudich: As a young researcher or someone who has a focus in spectroscopy, I would focus on developing your problem-solving and critical thinking skills while working in the laboratory. I believe that at least in pre-college and even in some college training, that tends to be the area where your skills aren't developed to where they need to be.

What you also need to do is put yourself in unique situations and attempt to solve them. Utilize the resources that you have available. As AI has evolved, it can be a useful resource to help in answering a question, but you should not rely on it as generating an answer for you to utilize and call it your own like web searches in the past. In terms of what I've done, information provided by AI is just information. You need to utilize that information to generate a path for you to follow to answer your hypothesis or question.