Two University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa graduates are making a difference at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), where they work to identify the remains of U.S. service members who never returned home from past conflicts.
Forensic anthropologists Ashley Atkins and Stephanie Medrano both credit UH with preparing them for meaningful careers at DPAA, which operates the world’s largest forensic anthropology laboratory at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Korean War project
Atkins earned her PhD in anthropology in UH Mānoa’s College of Social Sciences in May 2025 after moving to Hawaiʻi in 2017 to pursue her dissertation research on human remains in Japan. She works on DPAA’s Korean War project, which involves identifying soldiers’ remains disinterred from the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as Punchbowl.
“Every other week we’re doing disinterments at Punchbowl, so we get eight sets of new remains and we go through those and go through the identification process using anthropological methods,” Atkins said. “It’s just such a nice and meaningful job to have, and you always feel like you’re doing something important.”
Atkins said UH Mānoa’s anthropology department and the Center for Japanese Studies played a critical role in her development.
“UH really shaped me into a more polished anthropologist,” she said. “My advisor (Professor Christopher Bae) was so knowledgeable and helpful to me, and as a whole UH has been great for me. The Center for Japanese Studies was one of my funding outlets so I wouldn’t have been able to do my research without their funding. I also got a lot of experience at the John A. Burns School of Medicine’s Willed Body Program.”
She continues to give back as a lecturer in forensic anthropology at UH Mānoa.
Tarawa and Solomon Islands projects
Medrano, who graduated from UH Mānoa with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 2011 and UH West Oʻahu with a certificate in forensic anthropology in 2017, works on DPAA’s Tarawa and Solomon Islands projects. She analyzes both complete and fragmentary remains to help bring families answers after decades of uncertainty.
“It definitely is a privilege to work here to try to provide families with closure,” Medrano said. “These individuals have been looking for their family members, some going on 80 years because we deal with World War II individuals as well. It’s a really awesome feeling to be able to give that to family members.”
Medrano said UH provided the mentorship and opportunities that led her into the field.
“When I first started there, I had really good mentors. Dr. (Miriam) Stark was really integral in my education, and Dr. (Christopher) Bae was also really important too,” she said. “Luckily, UH West Oʻahu had the forensic anthropology certificate program, and part of their curriculum was to do an internship here at DPAA. So it all kind of ties together.”
‘Dream job’
The graduates’ work comes as UH and DPAA strengthen ties through a new five-year Education Partnership Agreement signed in August 2025. The agreement aims to expand research collaborations, student opportunities and scientific innovation to advance DPAA’s humanitarian mission.
“I think for forensic anthropologists as a whole, working at the DPAA is where you would like to end up—a lot of people’s dream jobs,” Atkins said. “I would like for anthropologists and just anyone in any field to know that you can get to your ultimate dream goal for a job.”
“I came in as a 3rd-year undergraduate at UH and I was still trying to find my path. It was the professors that worked at UH Mānoa and then the professors that worked at UH West Oʻahu that really helped me,” Medrano said. “For students, if you apply yourself, network and utilize the resources that are at UH—because there’s a lot—you’ll be able to, let’s say if you did want to be a forensic anthropologist, you could end up here and/or whatever it is that you wanted to do.”
