For Alpine resident Scott Woodward, digging up mummies in 2,000-year-old caves or working on the DNA for a Columbian Mammoth is all in a day's work. As a genetic scientist, his job is to link the past with the future with techniques that are changing almost as fast as they are discovered.

His resume reads like a National Geographic magazine, with excursions around the world seeking DNA samples.

His first memories of wanting to become a scientist were as a 9-year-old. A neighboring scientist gave him a jar of fruit flies which he studied. He would gaze into the jar and count which ones had red eyes and which ones had black eyes, and which ones had veins in the wings. Another scientist, also a neighbor, gave the kids jars with cyanide and sent them out collecting bugs.

When he was a sophomore in high school a good friend contracted cancer, which fueled his desire to find a cure. A future scientist was born.

Years later he was sitting in a laboratory, reading the results come off a film processor and realized with both awe and excitement that he was the first in the world to know they had identified the gene that caused cystic fibrosis. For Woodward, it is the merging of the scientific and the spiritual that has made this journey so incredible.

"I knew something at that moment that no one else in the entire world knew," he said. "And I recognized at that moment that the feelings were identical to the spiritual feelings I had when I realized I had come to know truth. When you know something, scientific or spiritual, the feelings are the same."

Part of the allure for Woodward is linking the past and the future in ways that are meaningful to people. As he was one of only a few scientists to handle the Dead Sea Scrolls, he said it was almost overwhelming to realize what DNA can do today to provide answers about the past.

His work on ancient studies helped him to realize "if we can do this with people 2,000 years old, what can we do for people todayfi"

Woodward currently serves as Director and Chief Scientific Officer for Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, some big words for DNA-driven genealogy. The project's goal is to link every individual in the world together through DNA.

If scientists at the foundation can show people how they are related, it may change the way people think about and act toward each other, he said. They hope to expand the definition of family to include people some wouldn't have otherwise known they were connected to. The project has a non-profit status.

One of his co-workers, Natalie Myres, Director of Research of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, expressed appreciation for him.

"It has been my pleasure to work with Dr. Woodward for the last six years," she said. "His dedication to building the world-wide Sorenson DNA database has resulted in an invaluable database for genetic genealogy research."

Woodward's goals are ambitious. When asked what he wanted to have accomplished in 10 years, he said, "I don't know what I want to do in 10 years, but in one year I want to be able to sit down with anyone in the world, show them on a map to whom they are related, their common ancestors, the common genetic makeup of them and their ancestors and how the traits they have today were passed on to them."

Woodward expects he'll continue to work in the field of genetics as long as he's able.

"I never get bored. The techniques continue to advance and every six months the techniques change," Woodward said. "There is always a sense of excitement with this work."