Dr. Brian Olson

Courses Taught: CHM 105
Special Projects: Dr. Brian Olson, the Forensic Science Course Coordinator at the County College of Morris, loves collaboration and trying new things. He works at the nexus of science, art, and technology, bringing an interdisciplinary spirit of collaboration to bear on innovation, research, and science education. Dr. Olson collaborates with faculty in the Department of Criminal Justice, the Department of Information Technologies, and the Photography Program at CCM to create virtual reality death scenes for use in education.

His forensic science class and his students at the County College of Morris have been featured on NJTV/PBS.

ttps://www.pbs.org/video/february-19-2020-njtv-news-with-mary-alice-williams-1582123533/

To learn more about Olson’s collaboration on virtual crime scenes, click here

Dr. Olson also created a dollhouse of death to be used for miniature death scene investigations. Outstanding miniatures were hand made by notable artists, including Michael Yurkovich, Jose Gomez, Jim Pounder, Elle Piccolo, and Betty Valentine.

New innovations for the forensic science course include Raoul, the custom-made life-size forensically-accurate bust of a murder victim.

Research

Dr. Olson responded early to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In May 2020, he published research to provide valuable data to laboratories to design drugs that target proteins critical to the persistence of the virus that causes COVID. In the future, new drugs may be needed to combat vaccine-resistant strains of SARS-CoV-2 that may appear in the future. Dr. Olson’s avatar currently collaborates on SARS-CoV-2 research using virtual reality for visualization and drug design.

Dr. Olson also does research on opioid receptors to investigate how simulated water molecules can inform drug design to produce new opioids that will be less likely to cause addiction and overdose.

Notable Patents & Publications

AN ONLINE REPOSITORY OF SOLVATION THERMODYNAMIC AND STRUCTURAL MAPS OF SARS-COV-2 TARGETS

Dr. Brian Olson, Anthony Cruz, Lieyang Chen, Mossa Ghattas, Yeonji Ji, Kunhui Huang, Steven Ayoub, Tyler Luchko, Daniel J. McKay, Tom Kurtzman

CHEMRXIV

Published online May 13, 2020

AN ONLINE REPOSITORY OF SOLVATION THERMODYNAMIC AND STRUCTURAL MAPS OF SARS-COV-2 TARGETS

Dr. Brian Olson, Anthony Cruz, Lieyang Chen, Mossa Ghattas, Yeonji Ji, Kunhui Huang, Steven Ayoub, Tyler Luchko, Daniel J. McKay, Tom Kurtzman

Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, Volume 34, Issue 12

Published online Sep 11, 2020

Kurtzman, T. P., Ramsey, S. J., Olson, B. L., Cho, E. S., Jung, S., Minsup, K. (2016) Method of Using a Water-based Pharmacophore; US 20160253451 A1

SELECT RECENT PRESENTATIONS AND WEBINARS

Olson, B. (2021) Water-based Lead Identification. City University of New York Graduate Center

Olson, B., Kazaba, M. (2021) Scaffolding Virtual Reality Death Scenes. Council of Forensic Science Educators (COFSE). Webinar.

Olson, B., Kazaba, M. (2021) Embracing the Move Online: 360° Virtual Scenes. County College of Morris (CCM), Randolph, NJ

Olson, B., Salinas, D., Burns, C. (2019) C2 Summit for Pedagogical Advancements in STEM. Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC), Branchburg, NJ

Wiley Journal Submissions Reviewer

Journal of Computational Chemistry

Molecular Informatics