Associate Professor
cehrhardt@vcu.edu

Dr. Ehrhardt holds a B.S. degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Connecticut at Storrs. He then began his graduate work at UC-Santa Barbara in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences where he conducted research on the genetic and chemical signatures of marine hydrothermal microorganisms. After completing his PhD in 2007, Dr. Ehrhardt worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Counterterrorism and Forensic Science Research Unit of the FBI in Quantico VA. While at the FBI, he focused on forensic signatures of Bacillus cereus spores, specifically how fatty acid methyl ester profiles of spores can be used to determine the source of illicitly-produced microorganisms. He also participated in a number of other research project while at the FBI including protein profiling of spores, bacterial hydrophobicity determinations, and testing of forensic light sources on biological evidence.

After the FBI, Dr. Ehrhardt worked in the Trace Chemistry and Signature Science Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA. There he primarily worked on developing forensic signatures for Yersinia pestis and Bacillus anthracis but also helped refine multivariate frameworks for distinguishing castor beans processed with different methods.

At VCU, Dr. Ehrhardt’s main interests are the forensics associated with pathogen monitoring  and specifically how biochemical signatures associated with a bacterial cell can be used to distinguish the occurrences of ‘natural’ from man-made organisms.  He is working on new biosignature systems (e.g. protein and lipid profiles) for organism identification in complex matrices such as soil, air, and environmental water supplies. In addition, Dr. Ehrhardt is intensely interested in multivariate statistical methods to process and interpret the often complex orthogonal data generated from his projects.

Dr. Ehrhardt continues to collaborate with the FBI and PNNL as well as several other university and private laboratories. He has published several manuscripts on environmental signatures of microorganisms and the forensic applications of various microbial profiling techniques.