MariaTeresa A. Tersigni-Tarrant, PhD, D-ABFA, D-ABMDI
Disclosures: NO DISCLOSURE ON FILE

MariaTeresa A. Tersigni-Tarrant, PhD is board certified Forensic Anthropologist (D-ABFA) and board registered Death investigator (D-ABMDI). She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine (SLUSOM), where she serves as the Co-Director of Forensic Education. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant is the co-course director and instructor for the Basic and  Advanced Medicolegal Death Investigation Courses offered through SLUSOM.  She serves as a Forensic Anthropologist on National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s Team Adam, as well as, serving as a part-time Forensic Anthropologist for SNA international in support of the defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. Dr. Tersigni- Tarrant also serves as part-time faculty member at Oakland University in their Forensic Nursing Program and  Saint Louis University’s Forensic Science Program.

Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant serves as a Forensic Anthropologist contract consultant for various other medicolegal entities in Missouri and Georgia. She was elected President of the American Board of Forensic Anthropology in 2019, a position which she continues to hold.

Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant received her bachelor’s degrees in Microbiology and Anthropology from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan in 2000. She attended graduate school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she received her Master of Arts Degree in Physical Anthropology in 2002. She continued to pursue her doctorate at The University of Tennessee, with a dissertation entitled Serial Long Bone Histology: Inter and Intra Bone Age Estimation. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant received her Doctorate in 2005. She was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in 2005 working at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command on Hickam AFB, Hawaii. During this fellowship, she was instrumental in establishing standard operating procedures for the histological analysis of human remains for the purpose of identifying missing armed-service members. 

Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant’s research interests include bone biology; human and non-human histology; child and elder abuse: patterned fractures and timing of healing;  bone pathology; and developmental anatomy. Dr. Tersigni-Tarrant is passionate about curricular development in anatomy, embryology, and histology.