Roderick Bates is an Organic Chemist by training, but has been teaching Forensic Science by accident since 2005. He earned a PhD from Imperial College, London and followed this with postdoctoral work at Colorado State University. After academic positions in North Texas, Bangkok, Thailand and Exeter, England, he settled in Singapore. He is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry. In addition to Forensic Science, he also teaches Organic Chemistry and is the author of a text book called “Organic Synthesis using Transition Metals” which will not be of interest to students in this course.