Ana

Pego

Ana Pego obtained her undergraduate degree in Forensic Investigation, with a first-class honours, from Glasgow Caledonian University (in addition to an exchange period of 6 months at Tampere University of Applied Sciences), in 2012, where she has developed a final-year project on the properties of colloidal silver and their implementation for the production of antimicrobial polymers to be used in children's toys. After that, she decided to specialize in Forensic Toxicology and was awarded her masters degree from The University of Glasgow in 2013 where she graduated with merit and worked on evaluating different liquid-phase microextraction techniques (DISDME, LLLME and LPME) in forensic toxicology. She then obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Sao Paulo in 2018, after spending 3 months at the University of California, Los Angeles. During those 4 years, Dr. Pego investigated the relationship between violent death, cocaine abuse and SNPs where she has worked with postmortem cases and analysed both hair and blood using GC-MS and LC-MS/MS with a variety of extraction techniques. That same year, Dr. Pego joined Avans University of Applied Sciences, where she concluded her Post-Doc in 2020, after working on a project entitled: 'SherLOK: profiling of individuals through forensic analysis and imaging of hair'. During that time she has spent 6 months as a visiting scholar at Maastricht University developing a MALDI-TOF method for the analysis of single hair strands to test for capsaicins. She then worked for the Dutch Screening Group as Head of Development. Nowadays, Dr. Pego works as an Assistant Professor in the Sciences Department at John Jay college of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. 

Her research focuses on innovative approaches to drug detection and biomonitoring, with a particular emphasis on hair analysis for the retrospective identification of drugs of abuse, novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and PFAS. Her work is also focused on developing strategies to differentiate external contamination from true drug incorporation. Dr. Pego’s work integrates advanced analytical techniques, including LC–MS/MS, with real-world applications in forensic and public health contexts. She currently collaborates with international organizations and agencies on drug monitoring initiatives.