Rate My Professor Chris Ehrhardt

Christopher Ehrhardt, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Forensic Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he joined in 2011 as Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and now holds the rank of Professor. His prior appointments include Postdoctoral Researcher in the Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Quantico, Virginia (2007-2010), and Postdoctoral Researcher in the Chemical and Biological Signatures Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (2010-2011). Ehrhardt earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He teaches courses including Forensic Chemistry (FRSC 400), Applied Statistics (FRSC 580), Microbial Forensics, and Survey of Forensic Science (FRSC 300).

Ehrhardt's research centers on non-genetic biological signatures for determining time-since-deposition of DNA evidence, survival and persistence of bacterial threat agents in the environment, cellular autofluorescence for differentiating epithelial cell types in touch samples, microbial forensics, and nanoscale characterization of forensically relevant cells. His lab develops methods for analyzing complex cell mixtures from crime scenes, including recent ASPCA grant-funded work ($36,331, 2024) to create tests for time-since-deposition of animal body fluids like canine blood and saliva in cruelty investigations. He received the 2023 Forensic Research Committee Innovation Award for a novel time-since-deposition method, VCU commercialization funding ($150,000 in 2018; $100,000 in 2019), and contributed to a $2.28 million grant for crime scene research. With over 1,827 citations on Google Scholar, key publications include 'Phylogeny and molecular taxonomy of the Bacillus subtilis species complex and description of Bacillus subtilis subsp. inaquosorum subsp. nov.' (2009, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, 361 citations); 'Effects of Soluble Cadmium Salts Versus CdSe Quantum Dots on the Growth of Planktonic Pseudomonas aeruginosa' (2009, Environmental Science & Technology, 207 citations); 'Differentiation of vaginal cells from epidermal cells using morphological and autofluorescence properties: Implications for sexual assault casework involving digital penetration' (2023); and 'Rapid Differentiation of Epithelial Cell Types in Aged Biological Samples Using Autofluorescence and Morphological Signatures' (2018, PLOS ONE). He chairs VCU's Dual Use Research of Concern Institutional Review Board since 2019 and delivers invited talks on forensic flow cytometry and time-since-deposition estimation.