Police are searching for suspects in what appears to be the murder of a young woman whose decomposed body was found Sunday in Greenwich Village inside a faculty residence at New York University, police officials said.

The body of Boitumello McCallum, 20, was found wrapped inside a sheet and next to a bed in her mother’s eighth-floor apartment after neighbors at 4 Washington Village called police to report that a foul odor in the hallway was coming from the apartment, police said. Police discovered the badly decomposed body at about 10 p.m.

The apartment where McCallum’s body was found belongs to her mother, whom sources identified as Teboho Moja, a New York University professor who is currently conducting research in South Africa.

Police officials are waiting on the results of further tests to be completed by the Office of the Medical Examiner in order to formally determine how McCallum died, but said they are treating the death as a homicide until those results are available. A spokeswoman for the medical examiner, Ellen Borakove, said the results might not be available for another two days.

Police sources said McCallum was likely murdered.

It is not yet clear on which day McCallum died, and medical tests, which could determine that date, might prove to be an important piece of evidence in the case.

A neighbor who lives down the hall from McCallum’s apartment, Daniel Lee, said that he was kept awake Wednesday night by a loud party that he believed was taking place inside McCallum’s apartment.

Mr. Lee also said two other girls about the same age as McCallum appeared to be living with her in the apartment for the summer.

McCallum, who was a student at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., is the daughter of two New York University professors at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Her mother, Ms. Moja, is a professor of higher education, and her father, Robert McCallum, is an adjunct professor of art education.

Ms. Moja, who is from South Africa and serves on the board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Institute for International Education and Planning, was informed of her daughter’s death yesterday afternoon, a police source said.

In response to the incident, New York University’s Department of Public Safety is increasing patrols in and around the school, a spokesman for the University, John Beckman, said.

Bulletins were also slipped under the doors of the apartments in 4 Washington Square Village informing residents that counseling is available for members of the New York University community, according to a graduate student who is house-sitting for a professor on the seventh floor, Alexandra Valentine.

Residents at an apartment complex that is home to many New York University faculty and some students, Washington Village, which occupies a large block between West 3rd and Bleeker streets in one of the city’s safest neighborhoods, were surprised to hear that a young girl may have been murdered in their community.

“It’s just startling, that’s all,” a Washington Village resident who is the wife of a professor at New York University, Julie Sheffield, 32, said. “You just don’t expect that in this community.”

Mr. Lee, who lives on the floor where the body was found, said it was especially shocking that the dead body had been inside the apartment for a while.

McCallum was scheduled to graduate from Mills College in 2009, according to her page on Facebook.com. A spokeswoman for Mills College, Deborah Dallinger, said the school would not comment on McCallum’s background.