Andrea Borchardt, M.S., is a Senior Forensics Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Ms. Borchardt oversees various forensic capacity portfolios, including the competitive Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program and the Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction Program.
She began her career at Bode Technology where in her 11-year tenure she worked on numerous DNA projects, including cold cases, missing persons, innocence project cases, sexual assault backlogs, and property crime backlogs. In 2015, Ms. Borchardt joined the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences as Manager of Forensic Biology to restore operations following the identification of significant errors in the interpretation of DNA mixture profiles. In this role, she tripled the unit’s productivity and successfully oversaw the implementation of probabilistic genotyping.
In 2019, she joined the National Institute of Justice as a physical scientist primarily managing the Forensic Biology Research and Development portfolio and the Capacity Enhancement for Backlog Reduction Program. Ms. Borchardt also served as an adjunct instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University where she taught forensic molecular biology.
She holds a Master of Science degree from Johns Hopkins University.