Dominican alumnae, Nancy Thomas ’12 and Rachel Hensley ’15, were guest speakers for the Biotechnology Club (moderated by Mrs. Janine Koenig) and Mrs. Koenig’s Biology II Honors class.

Hensley is a Crime Lab DNA Analyst II at Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory, part of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Among the topics she covered in her talks were forensics and CODIS, the acronym for the Combined DNA Index System and is the generic term used to describe the FBI’s program of support for criminal justice DNA databases as well as the software used to run these databases. May 2019, Hensley graduated from Louisiana State University (LSU) with a Bachelor’s in Biological Sciences.  April 2021, she received a Master’s in Forensic Science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  

Thomas is Manager of Oil Chemistry at Eurofins in New Orleans. Eurofins Scientific through its subsidiaries is the world leader in food, environment, pharmaceutical and cosmetic product testing, discovery pharmacology, forensics, advanced material sciences, and in agroscience contract research. At Eurofins, her field of work incorporates chemistry and analytical chemistry.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Food Sciences from LSU where she had a minor concentration in chemistry.