As Bioarchaeology Director, Lara Noldners's primary responsibility is seeing to the protection of ancient human remains and burial sites in Iowa, implementing both state and federal legislation. This means working closely with Native American advisors, documenting known burial sites and human remains in collections, investigating inadvertent discoveries of ancient human skeletal remains, facilitating repatriations and reburials with descendant communities, working with developers so that burial sites are not disturbed by construction projects, and promoting the importance of burial site stewardship. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the UI Anthropology Department, teaches an introductory seminar on Biological Anthropology, and manages the cadaveric, partially documented University of Iowa Stanford Collection.

At OSA, Samantha Murphy works in the Bioarchaeology lab where she assists in the identification of human remains and projects where human remains are likely to occur. She also assists with the repatriation of Native American remains to their tribes as part of NAGPRA and is a liaison to OSA’s Indian Advisory Council.