Before entering the examination room a white-haired man goes through some common procedures. He slips on his vacuum-sealed bacteria suit, smears Vick's Vapor Rub under his nose to keep out the smell, covers his mouth and nose with two surgeon's masks and puts his glasses back on. As soon as he enters the room with the medical examiner, his glasses instantly fog up, temporarily blinding him. The noxious fumes of singed flesh replace the soothing smell of the vapor rub. He removes his specs and for the first time sees the charred body lying in front of him on the examination table. The opening scene from this week's CSI: Miami? Think again. It's a scene from the life of Arthur Reis Jr. (CHEM).

Eight years ago, in preparation for a new class he had created called "Forensic Science: Colonel Mustard, Candlestick, Billiard Room," Reis took a trip to the Boston Medical Examiner's office for some hands-on experience.

"I thought that if I was going to teach a course on forensic science," said Reis, adjusting his glasses, "then I was going to need to have a better understanding of what I was going to teach. Going and watching the medical examiner was a great way to approach that sense of understanding."

While at the medical examiner's office, Reis saw the bodily remains of suicides, homicides and accidental deaths in preparation for a class that today is more popular than ever, with class size increasing from 50 to nearly 80 this fall. Since topics range from the science behind explosions to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the class appeals to both science-oriented students and to those who don't know a test tube from a beaker.

"I have been interested for a long time in how to teach undergraduates science when they don't have a scientific background or are not scientific concentrators," Reis said. "By using forensics as a backdrop and providing interesting cases, I can also describe the foundation of science behind it."

Many students agree that his approach is working.

"I have very little experience with science classes," Mark Zegen '07, ahistory major, said. "But I've learned a lot in Reis' class. Not only is he a great teacher with tough material, but by tying in all sorts of criminal cases I find myself more interested than if it were just a regular science class."

Reis' infatuation with scientific inquiry first started during his boyhood in Cicero, Il. when, his Boy Scout troop hiked to the site of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile 1 and 2. Standing above CP 1 and 2 made what Reis called "a lasting impression" on him and to this day he still keeps a rock from the site on the shelf beside his desk.

This moment stuck with him through seventh and eighth grades as he and his friends entered a stage of extracurricular scientific experimentation. "As kids, all of us used to have chemistry kits," Reis said. "We used to go down to the local druggist and get all kinds of fun chemicals, mix them together and make things go 'Kaboom.' We're lucky we didn't blow ourselves or our neighbors up. At that point we didn't have it quite right."

Reis' chemical prowess improved over the years he spent in the chemistry and physics lab as an undergraduate at Cornell College and as a student in the P.h.D program at Harvard University. After graduate school, he became an officer in the U.S. Air Force where he tracked satellites from inside a hollowed-out mountain in Colorado Springs.

"One of the biggest deals ever in my life was being on duty when the first sky-lab went off in 1973," Reis said. From one of the many three-story buildings tucked inside Cheyenne Mountain in the Rockies, Reis was "responsible for locating all 16 to 20 pieces that sky-lab [accidentally] broke into."

He recalls the work fondly. "It was fascinating work and there was a sense of real accomplishment when we got it right."

Reis headed into the world of scientific research after his military service. Following his experiences at what he called "a truly superb research position" at Argon National Laboratories in Chicago, Reis headed east for the academic life at Brandeis. The work he does in the labs here has made Reis a leading expert in the field of DNA amplification. He recently traveled to Germany to deliver a paper to the conference of Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction about how the amplification of a single molecule of DNA can lead to identification and also to a possible understanding of what effects mutations can have in mitochondrial DNA.

According to Reis, the various routes he has taken in chemistry-from exploding cherry bombs in his basement to teaching forensic science-were all motivated by the same goal.

"Pretty much everything I've done has been driven by interesting problems," Reis said. "Whether I'm thinking about how to find a satellite that has been lost for 20 days or figuring out how to replicate a DNA molecule, it's always about solving a puzzle."

This idea lies at the heart of Reis' forensic science course.

We may be talking about all sorts of murders and bombs and accidents," said Eddie Silvera '08, a member of the class. "But what the course is really about is how to solve a mystery."

This concept manifests itself many ways in the class, but perhaps nowhere more clearly than by one of the central texts' character: Sherlock Holmes.

"Sherlock Holmes does a great job demonstrating how you should think about science," Reis said. "He shows how you deal with what's valuable and what's not, how you sift through a gargantuan amount of information to get at what's important. If every single science student could understand this, he would be much better off."

The surge in enrollment in Reis' class may be due to the popularity of recent TV shows like CSI and Law and Order. Word of mouth may also have boosted class size.

Clay Auspitz '08 offered a possible reason for student interest. "This kind of class is appealing because it deals with catastrophes that the human mind might not even [be] able to grasp," he said. "For a lot of people, a better understanding of the world decreases a feeling of fear or helplessness. These things may still happen, but if you understand how they happen, you might feel just a little more secure."

Reis is a Sherlock Holmes in his own right. Not only does he spend his days solving the most difficult puzzles, but in doing so, he provides his students with a better understanding of the world-one case at a time.