Ms. Johnson is a forensic scientist with the New Jersey State Police – Office of Forensic Sciences.  She received a B.S. in Biology from The College of New Jersey (1998) and an M.S. in Entomology from Washington State University (2003).  She is currently a Ph.D. student, working with Dr. Dina Fonseca, in the Entomology Department at Rutgers University.  Diana is conducting a genetic study of the flesh flies indigenous to the Northeastern United States.

Dr. Eric Benbow is an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Dayton. His forensic entomology focus is on understanding the biological and ecological principles of carrion and human decomposition as it relates to applications in forensic science. Eric was a founding executive committee member for NAFEA, and has assisted on several forensic entomological cases with Dr. Rich Merritt and Ryan Kimbirauskas, both board certified forensic entomologists, and has been a co-author on several publications related to forensic entomology.

Most recently, Dr. Eric has collaborated with Dr. Rich Merritt (ABFE) on a recently won $2 million Emerging Infectious Disease grant from a joint NSF-NIH program through NIH Forgarty International Center.  This project is in collaboration with several faculty at Michigan State University, the University of Tennessee, Noguchi Memorial Medical Institute (Ghana, Africa), the Ghana Water Research Institute, and the World Health Organization.  Additional collaborations are being developed with Dr. John Wallace at Millersville University. The research addresses the role of human land use change on the ecology and distribution of a bacterial skin disease that is rapidly emerging in tropical regions of the world.