Forensic Workflow Total Solutions: From Sample Preparation to Reporting

According to the World Drug Report, approximately 5.6% of the world’s adult population (15-64 yr) consume illicit drugs annually, which has led to abuse of prescription medications, synthetic opioids, novel psychoactive substances, and designer drugs[1]. In the past decade, this number has doubled in North America alone.

In order for nations to deal with the drug market landscape, it is imperative to be able to accurately monitor seized material and biological specimens for the enforcement of drug control laboratories. These include (but are not limited to) drug enforcement agencies, hospitals, customs/border control, medical examiners, and forensic institutes.

The ability to accurately screen, identify and quantify these materials requires sensitive, robust, and simplified analytical workflows. In this overview webinar, we will discuss the full forensic workflow, including sample preparation, columns, LC-MS, data review and reporting. In the webinars to follow during the Webinar Week, we will dive into each of these steps in more detail. Additionally, on the final day we will discuss our solutions for seized drug analysis using direct-MS analysis.

[1] World Drug Report 2020, UNODC

Presenter: Rachel A. Lieberman, Ph.D. (Global Forensic and Toxicology Market Manager, Waters Corporation)

Rachel is a part of the Global Marketing team in Waters Clinical Business unit as a Global Forensic and Toxicology Market Manager. She has been at Waters since April 2023 after a 12-year career at Shimadzu, where she recently served as marketing manager for Forensic Science and Clinical markets. Rachel has gained experience working in the laboratory as an application scientist, senior LCMS product specialist and LCMS product coordinator in single, tandem and QTof technologies.

Rachel has extensive knowledge of technical and customer support, training, and forensic and clinical marketing strategies. She is an active member in ACS, ASTM E30, ASMS, SOFT and TIAFT, a producer-member of ANSI/ASB Toxicology consensus body and is a mentor as a part of the SOFT Mentoring program. Rachel received her B.S. degree in Chemistry with minor in Math from the University of Cincinnati and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.