News - FOUND

🎖️ Award FOUND’s pioneer wins the UK FCDO’s Sir Nicholas Browne Policy and Expertise Award

We are proud to share that Mariela Garfias has been awarded the Sir Nicholas Browne Policy and Expertise Award, a UK FCDO award recognising excellence in delivering policy objectives, selected from more than 200 nominations.

Mariela is FOUND’s FCDO pioneer and one of the people most responsible for the project’s impact.

Through FOUND, and with the support of incredible partners, we have located 27 people who were victims of disappearance in Mexico, allowing families to move towards answers and a form of closure. Our work is now being embedded with local and national authorities, and has expanded to collaboration with the Colombian Search Unit and the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.

In her acceptance speech, Mariela shared words that capture the spirit of FOUND: “From my decomposed body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them. That is eternity.” — Edvard Munch.

When searching for clandestine graves using technologies, nature often bears witness — through subtle changes in soil and vegetation. Memory persists. Our responsibility is to find it.

Mariela thanked those who carry this work with us: the British Embassy in Mexico City, our mentor Martin Johnston, the Frontier Tech Hub team, and above all the searching mothers, whose knowledge and strength remain our compass.

Read the full post on LinkedIn ↗

🇨🇴🇲🇽 Field visit Second visit of Colombia’s Search Unit for Missing Persons (UBPD) to FOUND’s experimental sites in Jalisco

We are deeply grateful to CVM Cyber and Ciaran Martin for their generous support in making this visit possible.

We welcomed Héctor Javier Gómez, geophysicist from Colombia’s Unidad de Búsqueda de Personas Dadas por Desaparecidas (UBPD), for a joint field deployment to FOUND’s experimental sites in Jalisco.

This visit focused on the gathering and processing of drone-based hyperspectral imagery across all five of FOUND’s experimental sites — marking only the second time this cutting-edge technology has been used in Mexico for humanitarian purposes.

It follows the October 2025 visit by Dr Julián Arias, Director of Prospection, Recovery and Identification at UBPD, which formally launched our collaboration on search and identification methodologies.

During this second visit, the UBPD offered key technical recommendations to enhance FOUND’s detection strategies for clandestine graves. The collaboration will continue in January 2026, when the FOUND team will visit UBPD’s team in Colombia to exchange experiences and integrate UBPD methodologies across FOUND’s partner states in Mexico.

📄 Media FOUND in The Guardian

This piece is the result of more than six months of email conversations, WhatsApp messages, and the journalist’s in-person visit to our experimental sites in Jalisco, Mexico.

We are deeply grateful for the care, depth, and commitment brought to this story after months spent listening to families, researchers, and officials.

Read the article in The Guardian ↗

🇬🇧 Funding FOUND receives new support from the UK’s FCDO through the Frontier Tech Hub

In the pitch, our team showcased FOUND’s impact to date, and we were awarded funding that will enable us to scale our mission: to drive systemic change in how missing persons are searched for in Mexico, Colombia, and beyond.

🌱 Driven by families and research communities
FOUND is guided and motivated by mothers’ search groups and researchers from CentroGeo, UNAM, IPN, UdeG, ITESO, Oxford, Bristol, Bath, Cambridge, and the Autonomous Universities of Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí.

🔍 We are now working directly with:

Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General
UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
Local Search Commissions and Attorney’s Offices of Jalisco, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, and Chihuahua (Mexico)
Colombian Search Unit
Mexico’s National Search Commission
Mexican Science and Technology Secretariat
British Embassy in Mexico City
British Association for Forensic Anthropology

🛰️ Technology for memory, dignity, and closure
We will continue developing — and embedding in official protocols — new ways to locate missing persons using advanced tools such as machine-learning models, hyperspectral cameras, seismic instruments, and electrical resistivity.

FOUND: Interpreting Nature to Locate Those We Are Missing.

📰 Coverage FOUND featured by Associated Press, The Independent, LA Times, VICE, and NBC

Associated Press: Why are scientists dressing pigs in clothes and burying them in Mexico?
The Independent: How pigs could help find missing Mexican drug cartel victims
LA Times: Why are scientists dressing pigs in clothes and burying them in Mexico?
VICE: Mexico Is Using Pigs, Drones, and Lasers to Find Drug Cartel Victims
NBC: Clothed pigs are buried in Mexico as scientists use them in search of the missing