Mirella de Heer
Vice-President - Region 5 (European)
mirella.de.heer@politie.nlRotterdam, Netherlands (Europe)
Mirella began her forensic career in 2004 at the Netherlands Forensic Institute, after getting her Bachelor of Science (molecular biology) degree and working in breast cancer research for two years at the Erasmus MC. At the NFI she began as a forensic trace examiner and started in 2009 her advanced training in bloodstain pattern analyses by Canadian, Australian and Dutch colleagues, which lead to her senior position. In addition to conducting and interpreting these investigations, she was also actively involved in writing pre-assessments and forensic expert reports. Besides being a senior examiner, she also took the role of advisor on and was very closely involved in coordinating and advising in criminal cases and teaching forensic classes, including BPA, within several (master) courses at, among others, the University of Amsterdam. In 2018 she changed jobs from the NFI and became a superintendent, forensic advisor at Regional Criminal Investigations Division department of Forensics at the Netherlands Police within the unit of Rotterdam. With this switch she also became the chair(woman) of two networks, the Dutch BPA network being one of them. This network has done a very good job when it comes to quality improvements e.g. having a similar why of reporting BPA, implementing a professional BPA appendix for judges and developing a professional checkup BPA for the colleagues. Which makes this network one of the leading groups within Forensics in The Netherlands. Since September this year Mirella was promoted to the senior advisor’s function within the Forensic department and became commander of CBRNe (chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear and explosives) team.