The Center for Judicial Scientific Research of Judicial Sciences at the University of Dundee, which has inspired the traces of the successful drama of the BBC, is threatened with closing while the institution tries to connect a budgetary deficit of 30 million pounds sterling .
We feared Research Center for Forensic Science, the largest interdisciplinary team in the United Kingdom dedicated to improving the science used to investigate crimes and continue managers.
“It is absolutely scandalous that the university throws one of their most precious assets,” said the award -winning writer Val McDermid, whose Trace series is based on a fictitious version of the Leverhulme. “From the revolution to study fires to innovations such as the use of comics to explain the subtleties of DNA to juries, what the center has achieved is extraordinary.”
University teaching staff will start three weeks of strike on Monday to protest against the financial mismanagement of the previous director and his team, who resigned after the revelation of the budget deficit last November.
The Leverhulme was created in 2016 by Dame Sue Black, better known for her work on war crimes in Kosovo, as well as Professor Niamh Nic Daéid, one of the main specialists in the world in fire investigation and Expert witness at the Grenfell Inquiry, who is still director.
In addition to its international research research, the center has also had a significant impact on the fictitious representations of the crime, said McDermid. “Writing Scottish crime is probably more precise than everywhere else in the world because of the generosity of experts there, which will answer your questions and tell you three other things you did not know.”
Lin Anderson, this creator of the judicial scientist Rhona Macleod and co-founder of the Tartan Noir Book Festival, Bloody Scotlandsaid that without the contribution of the Leverhulme, “I could not have written books as I wanted”.
Leverhulme experts are frequent guests at Bloody Scotland events, said Anderson: “Anyone can find themselves on a jury, and they want people to read in police fiction are as precise as possible. “”
The Labor MP for North East Scotland, Michael Marra, who was previously deputy director of the center, said that it was “a case study on how the university had failed to capitalize on his areas of real excellence ”.
“It doesn’t make sense. The staff worked with the judiciary through the United Kingdom to modernize the scientific foundations of judicial affairs and now exceeds a drug test service which could have an impact on the terrible balance sheet of Scotland on the deaths of drugs. »»
Marra asked why the university had sent staff to the staff last week when the center still had 16 months of its 10 -year financing subsidy from the remaining Leverhulme Trust. He also feared that these staff members will be included in the next dismissal regimes.
“The Scottish government has created a business model where the reductions in the financing of Scottish students mean that the income of the costs of other sources subsidize these students rather than cross research, which has led our establishments to make finer decisions and Smters about income, “he said.
A spokesperson for the University of Dundee said: “While external funding is coming to an end, we participated in the consultation with center staff at an early stage. This is a normal process when we approach the end of a large project funded from the outside. »»
They said that the center would continue to operate until the end of funding next year, and that forensic science would remain “a key pillar of the university”.