Associate Professor Jennifer Schumann is Head of the Drug Intelligence Unit at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and lecturer in Monash University’s Department of Forensic Medicine. Jennifer has a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Pharmacology (2006) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Forensic Medicine (2011) from Monash University. She is a forensic pharmacologist and toxicologist, with nearly two decades experience interpreting the involvement of alcohol and other drugs in death.

Jennifer’s research examines the harms associated with drugs in the community to inform Australian public health policy and practice, with a particular focus on addiction, misuse and overdose of pharmaceutical and illicit substances. She utilises her experience in Forensic Toxicology and Public Health research to draw information from numerous different clinical and post-mortem data sources, providing translational research pertinent to current Australian trends in drug use.

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 an Associate Investigator on the NHMRC funded project, the Emerging Drugs Network of Australia (EDNA), a novel toxicosurveillance project contributing to a national Early Warning System, as well as Forensic Lead on the state based project, EDNA-Victoria (EDNAV). She 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), an Adviser for Pill Testing Australia, 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. She is a PhD supervisor and a scientific journal reviewer for some of the top ranked international journals in substance abuse and legal medicine. Jennifer’s research has featured throughout the Australian media, including numerous podcasts and interviews on radio and television. Her research has stimulated public debate, engaged media and been directly responsible for changes in Australian policy and practice.