You could call them Thailand's version of CSI.

This week, a Thai government delegation is in Utah, hoping to forge a partnership with a Salt Lake City company that will aid in identifying thousands of remaining victims from the Dec. 26 tsunami, as well as expand Thailand's missing-persons center.

Dr. Khunying Porntip Rojanasunan, deputy director of Thailand's Central Institute of Forensic Science, dubbed "Dr. Death" by the media for her early work in processing corpses after the disaster, hopes to learn more from Sorenson Genomics, one of the few labs internationally accredited for verifying human identity.

Yet Porntip and her associates did not invite themselves.

Utah billionaire and Sorenson Genomics founder James LeVoy Sorenson asked them to come, paying for their 8,000-mile journey.

The team also includes Khun Manit Suthaporn, the Thai deputy permanent secretary of justice, who said he will report his findings to Thailand's justice minister and prime minister.

Porntip wants to convince her government that Sorenson Genomics is the right place to retest roughly 2,000 unidentified remains of roughly 5,300 bodies that were recovered in Thailand. Another 10,000 people remain missing in Thailand.

She also plans to organize future teams of her own scientists to visit Utah and learn of Sorenson Genomics' unique certification and information technology systems that match DNA profiles.

At the time of the tsunami, Porntip said, no labs in Thailand were internationally accredited.

However, the Thailand delegation is interested in more than tsunami identification efforts. In Thailand, where kidnappings and murders account for hundreds of missing people each year, Sorenson's DNA analysis also offers a new tool in fighting crime.

"In Thailand, we think that government officials, sometimes police, are the culprits abducting people," said Dr. Chumsak Pruksapong, co-director of the Thailand CIFS. "We are trying to establish a national database of DNA. Many countries have that kind of system."

Porntip estimates that 250 people are reported missing each year in four of 76 provinces in Thailand she oversees.

"We have 10,000 unidentified remains all over the country," Porntip said, "not related to the tsunami."

Sorenson's interest in Thailand piqued shortly after the disaster struck.

A friend, David Rockwood, president of Park City-based Pacific Rim Consulting, knew that one of Sorenson's companies had the technology to perform DNA matching.

The two came together. Sorenson donated DNA testing kits and Rockwood organized collection efforts. The DNA samples were flown to Salt Lake City and analyzed at Sorenson Genomics.