CNN

Friends, November is off to a very exciting start for my lab! A while ago, I was contacted by a reporter from CNN, Katie Hunt, who was curious about our eDNA project. You know the one I'm talking about - the pilot study my lab conducted to determine whether DNA collected from the environment could be used to locate human remains at archaeological sites. The study was a partnership with DPAA, a branch of the US Department of Defense that is responsible for locating, excavating, and repatriating the remains of all fallen US service members. They have thousands of open cases and were looking to speed up their process to provide closure to more families. My lab is one of the few in the country with equal expertise in archaeology and biology, so DPAA reached out to us. By sampling at sites with ongoing excavations, we were able to directly correlate eDNA results with findings of each excavation. That way, we could ground-truth whether eDNA was an effective methodology for locating human remains. All the field work for the eDNA project was in 2022, but we just finished the final report last summer. 

There has been other reporting on our project, but Katie wanted to report on the results. I kept her updated with our team's evolving timeline and sent her a copy of the final report as soon as I had permission. It's not often that my research is covered by the media, much less a high-profile outlet like CNN. Katie was an incredible partner throughout the process, and I am deeply grateful for her balanced, nuanced, professional presentation of our work. The story was published today. 

You can read Katie Hunt's excellent reporting on the eDNA project here:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/science/edna-ocean-floor-wrecks-lost-troops