Soleil Young is analyzing bone samples from the Smithsonian Institution for signs of tuberculosis.

Anthropology student Soleil Young — a senior who is also majoring in biology — was featured in the Daily Orange earlier this fall because of unusual archaeological research she is conducting for her honors thesis.

Young, a Syracuse University Remembrance Scholar hailing from Syracuse, is  scraping bone dental calculus — a form of hardened dental plaque — to extract DNA for research and signs of tuberculosis. After finishing molecular study of the calculus, which she expected to complete late in the fall semester, she plans to focus on the historical and social context underlying those findings.

“She has a real talent for crossing boundaries and disciplines,” Professor Shannon Novak told the Daily Orange. “She clearly comes at topics from a very diverse — humanistic, scientific and activist — background. It’s really impressive.”

Read the entire Daily Orange article here.