Remodeling Forensic Skeletal Age

Bridget F.B. Algee-Hewitt is a biological anthropologist who studies skeletal and genetic trait variation in modern humans. Her research combines data analytic and hands-on laboratory approaches to the estimation of the personal identity parameters – like sex, ancestry, stature, and age – that are essential components of the biological profile used in forensic identification of unknown human remains and for the paleodemographic reconstruction of past population histories in bioarchaeology. Concerns for social justice, human rights, and issues of group disparities underlie much of her work. As a practicing forensic anthropologist and geneticist, she provides forensic casework consultation to the medico-legal community. Jieun is a biological anthropologist whose specialty lies in human skeletal biology and its application to forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. Her doctoral dissertation investigated the extent of population variation (if it ever exits) in skeletal aging process using Southeast and East Asian populations and sought to develop a more inclusive age-at-death estimation method that is broadly applicable to Asians. To complete her fieldwork abroad, she was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, the W. M. Bass Endowment and W. Leitner Award offered by the Forensic Anthropology Center, UTK, and the W. K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, UTK. She has been working with skeletal remains in Korea, Japan, Thailand and the U.S., and as a part of the National Institute of Justice postdoctoral research, is currently building 3D laser scan data on those populations to extend the applicability of the fully computation age estimation methods to more diverse populations.