About US
Dr Archana Vijayakumar
Archana Vijayakumar is a dedicated dental professional and emerging researcher in forensic odontology. She recently completed her Master’s in Forensic Odontology with distinction at the University of Dundee, earning the prestigious Principal’s Commendation Award for academic excellence. Her research focuses on innovative methods for detecting substance exposure through dental tissues, providing valuable insights for forensic investigations and public health studies.
Holding a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from India and a Diploma in Primary Care Dentistry from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Archana has extensive clinical experience as a General Dental Surgeon across India and the Middle East. She currently works as a Dental Care Professional at Portman Dentex, applying her expertise in patient care while continuing her research in forensic applications of dentistry.
Passionate about advancing forensic odontology, Archana aims to integrate substance detection through dental analysis into health services across Scotland and globally. Her goal is to develop early dental examination protocols to help identify substance use in teenagers and vulnerable populations, enabling timely intervention and prevention of long-term health consequences. By collaborating with public health authorities and forensic experts, she seeks to establish dental screening as a key tool for early substance detection in forensic and healthcare settings.
To further this mission, Archana is actively seeking funding opportunities to transition her research into a full-time study, allowing her to develop innovative methodologies and expand the practical applications of forensic odontology in public health and crime prevention
Dr Scheila Manica
Scheila Mânica was the Programme Lead for the full-time M.Sc. Forensic Dentistry and MFOdont Forensic Odontology programmes at the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK. She recently designed the MSc in Forensic and
Legal Odontology and PG Dip and Cert online programmes and is the current programme lead for those programmes.
She supported the training of students from Syria, Jordan and Iraq to help with the human identification of victims of conflict zones, including the training in dental profiling when ante-mortem dental records are not available or destroyed.
She also supervises PhD students, and her own research focuses on digital technology to aid teaching, dental profiling, and comparative dental analysis. Mental wellness in Forensic Dentistry, communication skills and revision of guidelines and policies are also of great interest. She has experience with disaster victim identification and has been deployed to international disasters in Africa, UK and Europe. Also, she actively publishes several scientific papers in international journals. She recently published one of the first articles on convolutional neural networks (CNN) for dental sexual dimorphism. In research, she collaborated with experts in Russia, Brazil, India, Peru, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia and counting.
Dr Hemlata Pandey
Dr. Hemlata Pandey is a well-established full-
time practitioner in the field of Forensic
Odontology. She is a Lecturer (Teaching and
Research) at the Centre for Forensic and Legal
Medicine, University of Dundee. She is the
Programme Lead for Full Time MSc and
Masters programmes in forensic odontology
at the School of Dentistry.
She has experience in providing expertise in
cases of identification of human remains,
dental anthropology, 2D and 3D facial
approximation and superimposition, dental
age estimation, disaster victim identification,
child abuse, vulnerable person abuse, dental
malpractice and negligence. She has delivered 2 TEDx talks.