Greg Hampikian, Ph. D.

Dr. Hampikian has a joint appointment in the departments of Biology and Criminal Justice at Boise State University (BSU). He is best known as the volunteer forensic DNA expert on Innocence Network cases around the world, providing DNA expertise on more than 3 dozen exonerations. Hampikian also works with police in the US and overseas, and helped the French police solve the murder of Elodie Kulik using a novel DNA technique. He is the founder and director of the Forensic Justice Project at BSU, and helped establish the Georgia Innocence Project, the Irish Innocence Project, and the Innocence Project France.

His research on Subjectivity and Bias in Forensic DNA was featured in The Economist and New Scientist; and his New York Times Op-Ed contributions, “Men, Who Needs Them?” and "When May I Shoot a Student?” both rose to the top of the NYTimes most forwarded email list. 

His work has been covered by The Today Show, Andersen Cooper, Good Morning America, Dateline, Nightline, 20/20, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Science, Nature, Scientific American, Le Monde, and The Irish Times, among others. 

Dr. Hampikian is an award-winning playwright. His book Exit to Freedom with exoneree Calvin Johnson, chronicles Mr. Johnson’s 17-year fight to prove his innocence using DNA.

In 2013 Dr. Hampikian was inducted as a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. His DNA research covers a wide rage of topics including pioneering work on the smallest sequences absent from nature that he has termed Nullomers. Using these Nullomers, Dr. Hampikian has invented a method of tagging DNA samples to prevent contamination of forensic evidence. His other inventions include 198 drugs made from Nullomer peptides that are effective against cancer and other diseases.  His research has been published in Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Forensic Sciences, International Journal of Legal Medicine, American Journal of Anthropology, Peptides, Smart Materials and Structures, among others. 

His diverse research interests include patents granted and pending covering power generation and miniature pumps using magnetic shape memory alloys. 

Dr. Hampikian has held research and teaching positions at Yale University Medical School (New Haven, CT), the Worcester Foundation for Developmental Biology (Wooster, MA), Emory University (Atlanta, GA), La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia), and the Centers For Disease Control (Atlanta, GA).