The University of Wisconsin-Madison has launched a first-of-its-kind initiative to help identify and recover missing soldiers, school officials announced.
The university announced two months ago that it will "put its expertise in history, archaeology and forensic and genetic analysis behind the U.S. government's tedious efforts to identify and recover" missing soldiers," The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The Missing In Action (MIA) Recovery and Identification Project (RIP) will speed the identification of missing United States Armed Forces from past wars. The current focus is on recovery and identification of World War II US Forces in the European Theater, The Daily Signal reported.
This initiative comes nearly a year the university helped identify the remains of PFC Lawrence S. Gordon, a United States soldier who was killed in action, but whose remains were later misidentified as a German soldier's and "buried with the enemy," The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Jed Henry, a communications specialist at the university who produced the film "Honoring a Commitment: The Story of PFC Gordon," told The Daily Signal that the initiative " came about due to the Gordon case."
The project's primary goal will be to identify new technologies to enhance the recovery and identification process and apply these technologies with the creation of new protocols.
"This isn't a one-time thing," Henry said. "This is something the university has committed to."
