Sean Tallman (2014 Fellow) is currently a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, where he specializes in human skeletal biology and forensic anthropology. Sean's GRF-STEM award is covering research expenses associated with travel to Asia during the summer of 2015, to access three rare and understudied documented skeletal collections housed in major research universities in Japan and Thailand. Sean's dissertation work will provide revised, population-specific methods to improve the accuracy of forensic-related identifications of individuals belonging to East and Southeast Asian groups. This work is particularly important because Asian individuals "represent the fasted growing ancestral demographic in the U.S.," explains Sean. To date, most skeletal morphometric methods in forensic science rely on data developed from Caucasian groups, so research like Sean's dissertation study is particularly important for the future of forensics science in the United States.
Sean Tallman
NIJ Graduate Research Fellow
University of Tennessee
Date Created: July 17, 2019