Dr. Bruce Budowle received a Ph.D. in Genetics in 1979 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. From 1979-1982, Dr. Budowle was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Working under a National Cancer Institute fellowship, he carried out research predominately on genetic risk factors for diseases such as insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, melanoma, and acute lymphocytic leukemia. From 1983-2009, Dr. Budowle worked at the FBI's Laboratory Division to research, develop, and validate methods for forensic biological analyses. Dr. Budowle recently retired as Director of the Center for Human Identification and Regents Professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, Texas, where his efforts focused on the areas of human forensic identification, microbial forensics, and emerging infectious disease with substantial emphasis in genomics and next generation sequencing. As a Commissioner of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and a member of the Texas Governor's Sexual Assault Survivor's Task Force, he continues to research and work in the areas of forensic genomics and contributes to supporting humanitarian efforts via human identification. He currently is a visiting professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Helsinki and an adjunct professor in the Forensic Science Institute at Radford University.