Forensic Scientist and Memory Researcher Named Among Latest MacArthur Fellows

Texas State University forensic anthropologist Kate Spradley and Duke University philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist Felipe De Brigard are among twenty academics and artists named as this year's MacArthur Fellows. The prestigious fellowship provides each recipient with an award of eight hundred thousand dollars over five years with no restrictions on how the funds are used.

Operation Identification

Spradley earned recognition for her work bridging science and justice, specifically through her efforts to identify the remains of migrants who died crossing the Texas border. The project began in two thousand thirteen when she attempted to exhume the body of a young Salvadoran man named Elmer Esau Barahona in Brooks County. Barahona had fled El Salvador in two thousand twelve to escape gang recruitment, paying a guide to help him cross into Texas during a major migration surge marked by widespread poverty and political violence. He ultimately perished in the harsh local terrain consisting of scrub brush and sandy soil where travelers frequently lose their orientation. When Spradley arrived at the local cemetery to recover his remains, funeral home staff admitted they did not know his burial plot or the locations of more than a hundred other Central American migrants who had been buried without proper records, a phenomenon known as administrative loss.

Seeking Answers

In response to this crisis, Spradley founded Operation Identification and helped establish the Forensic Border Coalition to push for policy reforms. The coalition's advocacy led the FBI to update its policies so that federal databases could include DNA samples from Latin American families, significantly aiding identification work. Spradley's team now searches multiple southern Texas cemeteries using ground-penetrating radar and utilizes specialized techniques such as finger pad rehydration taught by the FBI to extract identifying details from decomposed remains. Other recipients in this year's MacArthur cohort include a bioengineer developing nanotechnologies for better drug delivery, a climate researcher studying polar sea ice, and an organic chemist using electrical currents to build complex molecules more sustainably.

Rebuilding Memory

De Brigard approaches his research from a different academic angle, challenging traditional views of how human memory functions. While science long treated memory like a library archive where pure experiences sit waiting to be retrieved unchanged, De Brigard argues that memory is actually reconstructive. When people recall past events, his work shows that the brain pieces together fragments from the original experience alongside information gathered from subsequent events in the past.

Context

The MacArthur Fellowship, often referred to colloquially as the genius grant, is awarded annually to individuals who show exceptional creativity and promise in their respective fields. Border regions in southern Texas have long presented severe humanitarian and logistical challenges for local authorities due to extreme environmental conditions and limited municipal resources for handling unidentified human remains.