Affiliation: University of Central Lancashire

Dr. Noemi Procopio is the Principal Investigator of the "ForensOMICS" Team at the University of Central Lancashire. She was appointed at UCLan in 2022 as Senior Research Fellow in Forensic Taphonomy after working at Northumbria University for three years as Lecturer in Forensic Science and then as Senior Research Fellow in Forensic Science. She graduated with first-class honors in Biotechnology at the University of Turin with a thesis entitled: "Forensic Genetics: Analysis of Samples' Low Template DNA'." Following her BSc, she obtained a 2-year MSc degree (first class honors) in Molecular Biotechnology at the same University, with a thesis entitled: "Body Fluids Mixture Analysis from Immunochromatographic Cards" under the supervision of Prof. Sarah Gino. She then joined the University of Manchester to start her PhD in Forensic Proteomics under the supervision of Dr. Michael Buckley. Her thesis is titled: "Proteome Taphonomy, Biomolecular Investigations into the Process of Decay for Forensic and Archaeological Applications." In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship with the project titled "Forens-OMICS": a cross-disciplinary implementation of omics sciences to in vivo and post-mortem aging investigations for forensic applications." Her project aims to investigate how biomolecules, particularly proteins, metabolites, and DNA, can survive and decay after death to identify new biomarkers in human bones capable of revealing information on the chronological age and the post-mortem interval (PMI) of the individuals. She is also investigating the use of metabarcoding analyses to study microbial populations for individual identification and PMI estimation purposes. Part of her research also involves the application of proteomic analyses to archaeological human remains to investigate past populations' lifestyles and health conditions.