Fulbright scholars to receive warm welcome at Consulate and CAHID

Published On Wed 16 Jul 2014 by Grant Hill

Photo opportunity: 10am-5pm on Thursday, 17th July. The US students will be seeing the work carried out at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID).

 

A reception will this evening be held at the US Consulate in Edinburgh for 10 American students currently visiting the University of Dundee as part of the prestigious 2014 Fulbright-Scotland Summer Institute.

The undergraduates from across the United States are spending the day in the city learning more about Scotland’s unique legal and political system as well as its culture and history. They will then return to Dundee and spend tomorrow at the University’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID), where they will hear about the pioneering work carried out by Professor Sue Black and her team.

The visit will have special resonance as half the Fulbright scholars are pre-med students and will return to their studies informed about the internationally renowned Centre, which this week named the Val McDermid Mortuary after the best-selling crime author following a fundraising campaign to enable CAHID to exclusively use the Thiel method of embalming.

Professor Black said, “We are delighted to be welcoming our American visitors to CAHID and demonstrating the work carried out here by a team of very talented experts in anatomy, human identification and facial reconstruction. We are leading the work in a number of areas so I’m sure the students will benefit greatly from the experience, regardless of their own field of study.

“One thing they will definitely take away with them is the importance of being able to work with human cadavers and how the dead can help the living. We are the first University in the UK to use Thiel embalming exclusively and it is an area where, working together with other colleagues in the University, we are can make significant breakthroughs and change the face of scientific, medical and dental research and training.”

The students are spending five weeks (6 July-9 August) in Scotland for a packed programme of lectures, seminars and study visits on the theme Scotland: Identity, Culture and Innovation. Now in its second year the Institute is a unique partnership between the University of Dundee, University of Strathclyde and the US-UK Fulbright Commission with support from The Scottish Government and civic partners.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship educational and cultural exchange programme of the US Department of State which promotes mutual understanding between the people of the USA and more than 155 countries.

Val McDermid was one of a group of leading crime writers who lent their support to the University’s `Million for a Morgue’ campaign. The public were asked to not only donate money to the campaign but to vote for which of the writers they would like the morgue to be named after.

Val emerged as the winner, while the University has also named a dissecting room in the new morgue after another of the writers, Stuart MacBride, who has been a passionate supporter of the campaign throughout.

The campaign was launched to help build the first morgue in the country to use the Thiel method of embalming, bringing significant boosts to medical research and training in the UK. The Thiel method of embalming gives surgeons, dentists, scientists and researchers a more realistic method of testing techniques, practising procedures and developing new equipment and approaches.

The new Morgue is now up and running and helping change the face of anatomy teaching and research. 

CAHID is one of the world’s foremost institutions for the study and application of human anatomy, forensic human identification, disaster victim identification and forensic and medical art. It was awarded a prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education this year in recognition of its `world class excellence’.

Professor Black and other members of the CAHID team featured in the major BBC2 series `History Cold Case’. The CAHID team have developed ground breaking techniques in areas such as hand identification, which has directly led to the successful prosecution of a number of paedophiles identified from images of their hands found in obscene photographs and films.

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Fulbright-Scotland Summer Institute 2014 will take place at the University of Dundee from 6-23 July 2014 and at the University of Strathclyde from 23 July until 9 August 2014.  Students are selected on merit by competitive application to the US-UK Fulbright Commission in London.   The students attending the 2014 Institute are:

Ben Sides (Luther College, Iowa)

Bryce Santiago (Arizona State University)

Christina Nania (University of Texas at Austin)

Erin Sternhagen (University of South Dakota)

Henry Dickman (University of Notre Dame)

Jacob Schroeder (Kansas State University)

Joanna Redmon (Washington State University)

Rebecca Boehman (University of Kentucky)

Ryan Carson (University of Denver)

Yvonne Johnson (University of Kentucky)

 

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
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University of Dundee
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