An accomplished career spent pushing the boundaries in forensic entomology has earned Sherah VanLaerhoven a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

The Forensic Life Sciences award, Pathology-Biology Section, was officially announced at the academy’s annual conference held in February in Denver, Colorado. As a fellow of the academy, she says she was thrilled to receive the award.

“I’ve pushed the discipline a lot, especially I would say in the last 10  years, and I think it is those kinds of contributions that have resulted in this award,” says Dr. VanLaerhoven.

“It’s rewarding that people are noticing my accomplishments.”

VanLaerhoven joined the Faculty of Science in 2003. She is currently a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and a faculty member in the forensic science program. As an entomologist, she studies insects.

She says it all started as an undergraduate at Simon Fraser University under the tutelage of Gale Anderson, a Canadian pioneer in forensic entomology and experimental research.

“It was a strange feeling that I’m the first to do this,” she says. “My interest was ecology and the behaviour of insects and there were so many questions to be asked that no one was asking.”

For her research, VanLaerhoven studies the 14 species of local blow flies to build a baseline understanding for forensic investigations. Although many of these species are widely distributed in North America, they all overlap here in Essex County. She is fascinated by what allows this high degree of species co-existence. She explores what attracts them, such as protein or sugar sources, certain temperatures, or humidity.

“The blow flies are the more critical of the species when it comes to forensic entomology because they only reproduce on dead meat — whether animal, human, fish, or bird,” she says.

“Knowing that a fly species isn’t present this season or under these temperature conditions then why is it found on this particular body — it shouldn’t be here.  That can be helpful to tell if the body got moved.”

Earlier in her career she contributed to the advance of the field of forensic entomology by conducting a novel blind validation study looking at how post-mortem is estimated using insects and pigs and published the first blind validation paper in forensic entomology on how different assumptions can lead to different outcomes.  Together with her published papers on blow fly ecology and behaviour, this research led to VanLaerhoven writing multiple textbook chapters on her expertise.

One of her proudest career contributions was to the Steven Truscott case. Accused of murdering a young girl in 1959, Truscott served his time while maintaining his innocence, and in 2007 he was granted an appeal by the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Amazingly, says VanLaerhoven, at a time when no one was using insects, someone in the police force collected insect evidence. She used the photographs, insect reports, and pathologist reports, together with a recreation experiment to exonerate Truscott.

 “It was very satisfying from an entomology perspective to work on because of the history of the case and that we were able to come up with an estimate using the insect evidence.”

And how does she feel about the rise in awareness of forensic science surrounding television series like CSI and Bones? She admits that she gets compared to TV characters.

“It has been a dramatic change; those shows have really changed how people perceive forensic science and it is something I’ve played with at times. During COVID I taught ‘forensic science in fiction’ to talk about how the science and the scientists are portrayed verses the actual reality of it.”

From 2019 to 2021 she was chair of the American Board of Forensic Entomology’s certification board, where she is listed as a diplomate.