About US
Dr Archana Vijayakumar
Archana Vijayakumar is a passionate dental
professional and emerging researcher in
forensic odontology. Currently pursuing
Master of Forensic Odontology at the
University of Dundee, her research focuses
are aimed at detecting substance exposure
among populations. This cutting-edge
research seeks to expand the understanding
of how dental tissues can reveal historical
substance use, providing valuable insights
for both 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
practical experience as a General Dental
Surgeon in India and Middle East.
Passionate about forensic odontology, Archana aims to
further her research on substance exposure, exploring new methodologies and applications. Archana's future aspirations involve expanding her current research to develop innovative techniques for substance detection through dental analysis, contributing to advancements in the field of forensics.
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.