These MacArthur Fellows include two whose work fuse science and justice : NPR

Key Points:

• Forensic anthropologist Kate Spradley discovered that over 100 Central American migrants who died in Brooks County, Texas, were buried without records, prompting her to exhume the entire cemetery to identify the remains and return them to families.
• Spradley's work led to the creation of Operation Identification and the Forensic Border Coalition, influencing policy changes such as the FBI including Latin American family DNA in its database, improving identification efforts.
• Spradley was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow for her intersectional work in science and justice, alongside other innovators in fields like bioengineering and climate research.
• Another MacArthur Fellow, Felipe De Brigard, studies memory as a reconstructive process and explores how forgiveness can help trauma survivors in Colombia cope with their past, highlighting the malleability of memory.
• Spradley's efforts have positively identified about 300 migrant individuals, providing closure to families, exemplified by the identification of Elmer Esau Barahona, a young man from El Salvador found with a distinctive brown plaid shirt.