It wasn’t the glut of unsightly maggots blanketing every inch of the large pig’s carcass from head to toe, but the combination of that and the unforgiving smell amid the stifling heat that initially gave student Brittney Sylvester reason for pause.
A senior forensic science and mathematics double major, Sylvester was part of a team from Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO), who came to Northern Virginia this past summer for a program that paired aspiring scientists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions with George Mason experts in Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis (CINA) Center.
This 10-week program, DHS Summer Research Team Program for Minority Serving Institutions, ran from June through August and was funded by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant to meet critical research needs in the national security realm, while also diversifying the criminal justice system.