The field of forensics has grown far beyond catching criminals by finding their fingerprints or footprints at crime scenes, techniques first popularized in Sherlock Holmes’ mysteries 100-plus years ago. Over the decades, investigative advancements in forensics have made significant progress and solved untold numbers of crimes. They have become a part of popular culture, including various TV programs.
Recognizing how the field of forensics can be applied to apologetics, Dr. Jennifer Rivera leads popular hands-on forensics programs at AiG’s attractions as the Director of Educational Programs. In addition to over 15 years of teaching experience in the sciences, Dr. Rivera holds an education doctorate in curriculum and instruction, an MAT with a science concentration, and a BA in criminal justice, with hundreds of training hours in the forensic disciplines. Dr. Rivera used to work in a crime scene unit in southern Florida (no, it wasn’t of CSI: Miami TV fame!) and has had multiple speaking engagements for the International Association for Identification, the largest organization for crime scene personnel.
Today, Dr. Rivera declares she’s thrilled to educate children, teens, and adults as she presents “the truth of God’s Word using science, showing how science confirms the Bible.” In addition, she leads Explore Jr., Explore Days and Exploration. These are hands-on programs (for ages 5–10, 11–18, and 18+) at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Dr. Rivera also presents free Discover programs for daily guests at the museum. Topics include forensic fingerprint basics, forensic DNA fingerprinting, forensic hair analysis, and more. Dr. Rivera directs and teaches high school labs, such as the popular High School Lab Forensic Science program, in the new state-of-the-art laboratory at the Ark Encounter and in the lab at the Creation Museum.
Dr. Rivera’s writings include the book Work of Your Hand: Fingerprints, God, and You!, a high school textbook titled Intro to Forensic Science from a Biblical Worldview, and articles in professional journals.
On days when Dr. Rivera is not hard at work teaching or writing, she enjoys hiking and traveling.
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Request an Exclusive Speaker PresentationThe reasons for God’s judgment against the “great sinners” of Sodom and how its destruction points to a greater future punishment to come.
In this paper the origin and genesis of COVID-19 are postulated, and the epidemiological/ecological aspects of the disease and biblical perspective are shared.
When we begin to examine life on the molecular level, we quickly begin to realize that hemoglobin is specially designed for multiple purposes.
Uranium-lead radioisotope dating is now the preferred absolute dating method among geochronologists. But there are several problems with this particular method.
Researchers studying mole-rats and the East African root rat discovered that several had pain insensitivity to different irritants (referred to as “algogens”).
It was recently discovered that double-stranded microRNA (miRNAs) fed to honey bees conferred resistance to certain viral diseases that they were exposed to.
Animal polyploidy does exist, though it appears to be far less common than it is in plants. As in plants, polyploidy arises as a reproductive mistake.
Since an increase of information is needed for molecules-to-man evolution, evolutionists postulate polyploidy as a means for this.
A significant fraction of the earth’s radioactive elements, particularly uranium and thorium, appear to be in the granitic rock of the upper continental crust.
PDF DownloadERVs are found in the same location in the genome across species, so evolutionists apply their ideas of common ancestry and say ERVs demonstrate evolution.
If mathematics is already thought out and constructed by someone, it is logical that there would be no contradictions.
From almost the same genetic building blocks, DNA, very different results are achieved! But is that the result of evolution, or God’s design?
Evolutionists say the oldest human fossil, the Ledi jaw (LD 350-1), shows humans had evolved from ancestors like Lucy in East Africa 2.8 million years ago.
Many Christians today embrace the big bang theory as an avenue for evangelism, but if big bang evangelism ever was effective, its window is rapidly closing.
Rather than providing good evidence for the big bang model, the abundances of the light elements represents a significant problem for the standard cosmology.
Explore stunning evidence consistent with the young-earth model for the earth’s geomagnetic polarity reversal during the Flood and its aftermath.
Baptist theologian Dr. John Gill had an essential grasp on how the creation account is extremely important to Christianity in the 1700s. It still is.
Despite debate about the accuracy of the uranium “clocks” they contain, scientists say they’ve found a zircon with a confirmed age of 4.4 billion years.
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.