{"id":127969,"date":"2022-04-18T12:02:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T16:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=127969"},"modified":"2022-05-02T16:20:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T20:20:46","slug":"ucf-research-seeks-to-give-families-closure-by-developing-tools-to-help-identify-individuals-in-mass-graves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-research-seeks-to-give-families-closure-by-developing-tools-to-help-identify-individuals-in-mass-graves\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF Research Seeks to Give Families Closure by Developing Tools to Help Identify Individuals in Mass Graves"},"content":{"rendered":"

New research out of the University of Central Florida has the potential to give war crime investigators a new tool and to help the victims\u2019 families find closure.<\/p>\n

The National Institute of Justice has awarded UCF Associate Professor Matthieu Baudelet at the National Center for Forensic Science<\/a> a grant to advance a technique that may help identify individual human remains found in mass graves.<\/p>\n

Baudelet\u2019s method generates unique chemical profiles through laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). This approach will allow his team to pinpoint the exact number of individuals in a comingled mass grave and sort them out individually based on bone metabolism. Positively identifying someone by name requires further testing using DNA, which is outside the scope of this project. But Baudelet notes that identifying the number of individuals present among the remains reduces the number of DNA tests necessary to reach that point. In other words, the UCF technique could help investigators determine just how many people are found in a mass grave, which can help accelerate identifying individuals.<\/p>\n

Mass graves have long been part of war. Most recently a mass grave was found in Bucha, a town in Ukraine. Dozens of mass graves have been found in Iraq dating back to the war in the Gulf, several sites were discovered after the Bosnia conflicts of the 1990s, such as the largest mass grave in history to date at Crni Vrh, Serbia.<\/p>\n

Baudelet\u2019s technique may be especially helpful for sites found years later where identification becomes much more difficult. The potential applications to anthropology field work are considerable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is unique because it is the first time that elemental profiling will be evaluated on such a large number of individuals,\u201d Baudelet says. \u201cIt is gratifying to see the LIBS technology, something I have been working on for the last 17 years, be applied in this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baudelet\u2019s technique was successfully tested at USF\u2019s Facility for Outdoor Research and Training. With the new funding Baudelet and his team will continue testing at Western Carolina University\u2019s decomposition facility.<\/p>\n