Jamie won the Forensics Zone in March 2011. Here’s what he’s been up to with his prize money…

In March 2011 I was lucky enough to win the Forensics Zone with Mark Hill, a fatal accident Police investigator. Mark is a good guy, interesting and interested in all things forensics. He is a useful athlete too like me, despite his brush with a high voltage cable (which is another story); we’ve met up and done a few runs since together!

It was a great experience, talking and emailing directly to so many young minds as well as my fellow ‘experts’, I learnt a lot from Kat Davies, a forensic bug person!

My abiding memory of that time was of a mad three weeks, manically typing in the ‘live chats’ and spending long evenings replying to text questions but great fun! I promised to use the £500 winnings to create a science project and let you all know about it, so here goes.

I’m a forensic geophysicist Lecturer at Keele University in the Midlands. Part of my job means I look for buried things of forensic interest, whether they are bodies, illegal waste or unmarked graves in graveyards.

So what better use for the winnings than to set up a pretend crime scene? Once set up, I could run over it with some equipment and see what kit works best to find them again. Sounds obvious? But it hasn’t really been scientifically done to-date so that was my plan.

So I got some ‘volunteers’ (i.e. students) to help me dig some holes, bury some objects and then lay a patio. Honestly, it was a lot harder than it sounds and sucked up a lot of time last year! I’m happy to report it’s all complete and I’ve run over it with some kit. I’ve supplied some images and some basic results so you can have an idea of what I found out.

Longer term I’ll keep monitoring the pig grave (as the geophysical results should change over time as the pig rots) and give search investigators an idea what kit works best and possibly when is the best time to do a survey.