SPEAKER: Colleen Fitzpatrick, PhD
Topic: DNA: Who am I? What is my name?
During the holocaust, parents depended on others to hide their children, hoping that they all would survive to be reunited. At the war’s end, this was easier said than done, since children were often too young to know who they and their parents were. This is the story of the attempt to find the family of one person, after so many years of not knowing this information, using the tool of DNA to try and reunite that person with her family. It is one example of the power DNA has to solve many cases of missing or unidentified family members when all other attempts have failed.
Speaker: Colleen Fitzpatrick is an American scientist and entrepreneur. Colleen received her PhD in nuclear physics and her MS in physics from Duke University in Durham, NC. She received her BA in physics from Rice University. Following her scientific career she became involved in gemological research and is the author of three of the best-selling genealogy books. Colleen helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422 that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies. Colleen is now the forensic genealogist for the possible discovery of the remains of Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan on Gardener Island in the Pacific. Because she is highly multi-lingual with extensive international travel experience, she consults with county medical examiners and investment companies with an emphasis on international searches. Wikipedia is the source and has much more information with regard to Colleen. Her topic for our meeting will be related to DNA.
Her website: http://forensicgenealogy.info/aboutus.html
