UNCW professor Midori Albert went beyond lecturing and helped investigators identify a murder victim’s remains in a case that had grown cold.

Albert, a forensic anthropologist, received a phone call from the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department to help identify skeletal remains found in a wooded backyard on North Kerr Avenue. This was not the first time Albert had been asked to identify remains. “All of my training was in working with homicide victims,” she said.

Albert said she and a few students began searching the area and recovering remains that would help gather certain details about the victim, such as time and manner of death and, most importantly, identity.

Until Albert began her work at the scene, Scarlett Wood’s name was in a missing person file that had turned cold after three years. Using her forensic anthropology skills, Albert narrowed the investigators’ search for the identity to a white woman in her 20s.

According to the Wilmington Star-News, authorities were able to pick Wood, a 31-year-old hotel maid, from a list of missing persons. Final DNA results confirmed their hunch, and John Boyer, 48, was arrested in Georgia and charged with her murder. It was reported Wood went with Boyer to a party the night she disappeared.

“She was able to help us narrow it down,” said Detective John Leonard of the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department. He said had Albert helped them in other cold cases in the past.

Albert said in an e-mail interview that she enjoys the variety offered in the classroom and fieldwork and sees going beyond the role of a typical professor’s role as the nature of her job. She said the work “is satisfying because it’s purposeful and meaningful.”

Last year Albert furthered her work by traveling to New Orleans and helping with the recovery of Hurricane Katrina victims.

“I think I came to this field through an interest in puzzle-solving, death, bones and strong feelings of sympathy for those who suffer abuses of all kinds,” she said.

Albert is now working with fellow UNCW professors on a face recognition program that deals with aging.

Karl Ricanek, a computer science professor, is one of three members working with Albert on the project. He describes their efforts as trying to locate the weaknesses in face recognition technology when dealing with aging faces.

Ricanek said they are seeking reliable math models which could predict what a person’s face will look like years into the future. They have already created a large public database to invite more work on the subject.

“The problem of age progression has not been directly addressed until recently,” he said. He said they are competing with well-known technology schools on this issue, and their team was one of the first in the world to work with the problem. Albert is helping with physiology on the project. Completing the team are professors Eric Patterson and Edward Boone.

According to Ricanek, the new models would be helpful in security and would even carry over into the entertainment and video game industry. Hollywood could use it to accurately create what characters will look like in the future he said.

When not working in the field or on age progression, Albert teaches forensic anthropology and osteology.