Craig McKenzie

Senior Lecturer in Forensic Chemistry, University of Dundee

Craig works at the University of Dundee within the Queens Award winning Centre of Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) alongside the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science (LRCFS) with Professor Niamh Nic Daied and Professor Dame Sue Black. He is co-director of the multi-disciplinary Centre for Excellence in New Psychoactive Substances Research launched in June 2017.

He previously worked with the Scottish Police Authority Forensic Services as a reporting forensic scientist specialising in fire scene investigation and common fire accelerant analysis, instrumental analytical support and drugs analysis and provided expert witness testimony to the courts.

He is an associate member of the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) Drugs Working Group and a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Chartered Society of the Forensic Sciences and the American Chemical Society. He is a committee member of the RSC Analytical Division (Scotland). In 2017 he was selected to be one of 30 participants in the award winning 2017 Scottish Crucible programme, a prestigious leadership and development programme for researchers in Scotland.

He obtained his undergraduate degree in Applied Chemistry from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen in 1992, before joining Marine Scotland Science Marine Laboratory completing his PhD in environmental analysis and toxicology in relation to pollutants in marine mammals and their diets in 1999. He joined Scottish Water as an organic analysis team leader specialising in contaminated land and wastewater analysis.

Following on from his role as a reporting forensic scientist, he moved into an academic role at Robert Gordon University, in 2007, teaching forensic science and analytical chemistry at undergraduate and masters level. He took up his current post at the University of Dundee in September 2016.

He supports research within the team, specialising in the application of analytical chemistry, toxicology and chemometrics to research problems. His main role is to facilitate, develop and manage interdisciplinary research related to emerging illicit drug threats and New Psychoactive Substances (NPS). His research interests in this area are wide with areas of greatest focus being:

(i) Detection, synthesis and structural elucidation of emerging drugs of abuse and NPS using advanced mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and other appropriate analytical techniques in bulk drugs and a variety of matrices;

(ii) The determination, in vitro and in vivo of metabolites and metabolic pathways for NPS to aid toxicological screening and legal and clinical responses;

(iii) The study of the neuropharmacology and psychoactivity of NPS and emerging drug threats

As well as his forensic chemistry research he is also involved in environmental toxicology research on the effects of pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting chemicals in the aquatic and terrestrial environment and on pollution assessment in the marine environment with research links to the James Hutton Institute, University of Highlands and Islands, Robert Gordon University and Marine Scotland Science.