Special Paper - Introduction

I would not presume to propose a late submission for a paper to a conference if this were not such an extraordinary circumstance. My team has been in charge of developing the informatics tools for doing DNA identification of remains of those killed at the World Trade Center. Using non-standard development techniques under truly extraordinary pressures, we have developed a large integrated software system under contract to the City of New York for combining STR, mtDNA and SNP data to a large number of remains at various levels of compromise from decomposition and heat denaturing. It is not in any way an exaggeration to say that nothing like this system had ever been attempted before.