Steve Day joined the School of Chemistry in 2011 after 30 years in the Forensic Science industry with the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory and then the Home Office’s Forensic Science Service.

Over the last two years Steve has re-designed the Forensic and Investigative Chemistry degree programme so that it now not only delivers all the mainstream Chemistry expected of a good degree, but also teaches students how to apply this knowledge to the area of forensic investigation. Drawing on Steve's extensive knowledge of forensic science the course now covers most of the common evidence types as well as crime scene investigation and Courtroom skills. The main focus of the course is to teach students how to think critiacally about a problem and thus solve it. Somethng you won't learn from a book or a website.

Steve’s specialism is Questioned Documents and handwriting and he has appeared in Court on many occasions as an expert witness, from Loughborough Magistrates to the Courts of Appeal in the Strand.

During his time with the FSS he acted as the lead scientist for Questioned Documents, acting as a consultant both nationally and internationally and between 2002 and 2004 was the Chairman of the working group for Document Examination for the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI). He presented a workshop on the Interpretation of Handwriting evidence in 2006 and this was subsequently published in the Encyclopaedia of Forensic Sciences in 2009.

Latterly Steve has developed an interest in volume crime (e.g. burglaries), having contributed to the development of new processes for the use of footwear, glass and materials comparison in the investigation of crime. Steve has qualified as a lean-sigma green belt and is an experienced project leader, having gained a PRINCE2 practitioner qualification recently.

Steve’s PhD was in organometallic chemistry and his thesis was on the pentamethylcyclopentadienyl complexes of tungsten and molybdenum. His main research interests today are in the development of techniques to improve interpretation of physical evidence in forensic science, in particular in document examination.