In Diane's first job as an assistant college professor at Colorado State University, she helped archaeologists identify bones from digs in the university's Human Identification Laboratory. Law enforcement officials, coroners, and medical examiners sent dead bodies to the lab as well. Doing her first detective work, Diane searched for clues in the bones of murder and accident victims and helped to solve several high-profile murder cases.

In 1988 Diane joined a diverse group of volunteer scientists to aid law enforcement in locating clandestine graves and identifying the victims. The team, called NecroSearch International, revolutionized the science of locating and recovering bodies. They've found dozens of hidden graves and solved murder cases that had mystified local law enforcement agencies for years.

Diane is also a member of DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams), a U.S. government operation that sends teams of scientists to disaster sites all over the world. Diane always has a bag packed so she can hop on a plane anytime she's needed.

Unfortunately, after the attacks on 9/11/2001, Diane was needed badly. Two weeks after the World Trade Center towers fell, she headed to Staten Island, where tons of material and rubble was deposited. Diane's job was to sort out bone fragments and teeth, tagging them for later identification. It was a sad scene but Diane was genuinely proud to be part of the recovery effort.

In 1997 the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., asked Diane to make casts of the paw and tongue of a living tiger for an exhibit. Diane wasn't worried about getting injured because the tiger would be tranquilized. But how was she going to make a cast with materials that wouldn't harm the animal? The imaginative Diane used alginate, a pink gummy material dentists use to make molds of teeth. Diane's casts allowed zoo visitors to feel the roughness of the big cat's tongue and spread a hand inside the palm of its giant paw.