Associate Professor Jennifer Schumann is Head of the Drug Intelligence Unit at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and Monash University’s Department of Forensic Medicine. She is a forensic pharmacologist and toxicologist, with nearly two decades experience interpreting the involvement of alcohol and other drugs in death.
In 2014, Jennifer was a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institute and National Board of Forensic Medicine, Sweden, and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, supported by a Victoria Fellowship and an Australian French Association for Science and Technology Fellowship. Jennifer is a Chief Investigator on the Emerging Drugs Network of Australia – Victoria (EDNAV), a novel toxicosurveillance project contributing to a national Early Warning System. She is a Chief Investigator on a current NHMRC Project Grant in collaboration with University of Sydney and has received a number of awards and travel grants in recognition of her research, including a prestigious 2019 Churchill Fellowship.
Jennifer is Vice President of the Forensic and Clinical Toxicology Association (FACTA) and Editor of The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists (TIAFT) Bulletin. She is also a Theme Leader at the Monash Addiction Research Centre (MARC), and Chair of the FACTA Drug Checking Committee, which produced the first guideline for best practice in analytical drug checking. She has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature, has presented her research at conferences throughout the world, and has a strong record of prior collaboration with clinical and forensic researchers throughout the world.