RADFORD – Radford University professor Donna Boyd has become only the second forensic anthropologist in Virginia and the only one affiliated with a university to be certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.

Boyd joins a select group of only 61 other certified forensic anthropologists in the world who currently are conducting board-certified forensic investigations and research.

Boyd (right), an anthropology professor and co-director of RU’s Forensic Science Institute along with her husband Cliff Boyd, received the certification at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) conference in Denver. As a Diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology (DABFA), Boyd will be able to accept national forensic cases and be called as an expert witness in court testimony regarding these cases.

Boyd’s current forensics work involves the numerous unidentified human remains in Virginia’s western district. She was selected by the Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office to take DNA samples from the remains and enter the information into an FBI database in hopes of matching those remains to some of the nation’s 100,000-plus missing persons. The work is sponsored by a grant from the National Institute of Justice to the Virginia Medical Examiner’s Office.

Also at the AAFS conference, the Boyds and RU physics professor Rhett Herman presented at a poster session, “Geophysical Remote Sensing Applied to the Forensic Search for WWII Graves in Guadalcanal.” Their poster summarized the application of state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment that the Boyds, Herman and a group of RU students used in the 2008 archaeological and geophysical remote sensing field school in Guadalcanal.