Alexa and Dr Musah’s article titled Untargeted metabolomics for chemotaxonomy of blow fly pupae (Diptera: Calliphoridae) supported by DNA barcoding was recently published in the Journal of Medical Entomology.
Journal of Medical Entomology, Volume 63, Issue 3, May 2026, tjag075.
Alexa, Niara, and Dr. Dane attended the 74th Annual ASMS Conference in San Diego, CA that occurred May 31 - June 4. Alexa gave a poster presentation for her research titled “Chemical Communications: Discovery and Elucidation of Carrion Insect Cues that Prompt Carcass Colonization Behavior by DART-HRMS and TD/GC-MS” during Tuesday’s poster session. Niara gave an extremely well received oral presentation titled “Answering burning questions: A comparative analysis and identification of cannabidiol and Δ9-tetrahydro-cannabinol pyrolysis products” during Wednesday’s Forensics, Innovations and Application oral session. Finally, Dr Dane stepped in for Dr Musah and presented her poster “The Curious Behavior of Organosulfur Compounds in the DART Gas Stream: Implications for the Interpretation of Disulfide DART Mass Spectra” during Thursday’s poster session. Overall, it was a very successful conference that generated a lot of interest in our research efforts here at LSU.
Benedetta and Dr Musah’s review article titled Application of Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry to the Analysis of Cannabis was just published as an open access article in the Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry.
Benedetta successfully defended her dissertation on May 11. She did an amazing job!
We are all so very proud of you and look forward to seeing your continued success into the future. Congratulations, Dr. Garosi!!
Celebration!
Benedetta and Dr. Arathala’s article Experimental and Computational Investigation of Sulfur Chemistry in the DART-MS Gas Stream: Implications for the Interpretation of the Mass Spectra of Organic Disulfides was just featured on the cover of this month’s Journal of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry.
JASMS (2026), 37, 5, 1268-1280.
The Musah Lab went on a group outing swamp tour in Henderson, LA on April 19. While the day started out rainy and cloudy, McGee’s Swamp Tours did an exceptional job showing us the area and even located a number of gators for us to look at, despite the weather. Afterwards, we all went to Crawfish Town USA for lunch. Good times!
Lunch at Crawfish Town USA
Alexa Figueroa attended the Society for Wildlife Forensic Science 2026 Conference in Charleston, SC, March 20-26. She gave an oral presentation titled “Pupa-razzi: Capturing Metabolomic Signatures of Blow Fly Pupae by DART-HRMS and Chemometrics for PMI Estimations.”
Dr. Arathala and Benedetta’s article titled Investigating the Protonated Cannabinoid Dimer Detected in the Forensic Analysis of Cannabis by DART-MS: A Combined Mass Spectrometry and Computational Study was recently published as an open access article in Journal of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry on March 21.
JASMS (2026), 37, 4, 919–933.
With Chip at the JEOL booth
Benedetta, Alexa, Niara, Sarah, Dr. Dane, and Dr. Musah traveled to San Antonio, TX to attend PITTCON 2026 Conference and Expo that occurred March 7-11. Benni gave an oral presentation on her research “Insights on the Interpretation of the DART Mass Spectra of Organosulfur Compounds.” Alexa had two oral presentations “The Case of the Casings: Application of Field Desorption-Mass Spectrometry for Species Identification of Blow Fly Puparial Casings for Postmortem Interval Determination” and “A Grave Attraction: Utilizing Mass Spectrometry to Reveal the Chemical Cues Driving Aspects of Insect Colonization Behavior on Decomposing Remains.” Niara also gave an oral presentation “Burnin’ Up: Assessing the Temperature Dependent Pyrolysis Product Profile of Δ9-THC.” As for Sarah, this was her first time attending a national meeting with the Musah Group. She presented a poster titled “Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My: Rapid Identification of Animal Species Blood Using Paper Spray Mass Spectrometry.” Professor Musah gave two oral presentations “The Interconversion of Major Cannabis Cannabinoids Under Pyrolysis Conditions: Implications for Drug Testing and Analysis” and “Characterization of CBD Pyrolysis Products by GC x GC – HRMS.” We had an extremely full schedule!
Alexa presenting at AAFS
Alexa Figueroa attended the American Academy of Forensic Sciences 2026 Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA from February 9-14. Alexa gave an oral presentation on research entitled “A Bug’s Life: A Soft Ionization Mass Spectrometric Approach for the Species Identification of Unknown Entomological Evidence for Postmortem Interval Determination” on February 13.
The New Orleans Advocate Newspaper
Professor Musah and Ph.D. student Alexa Figueroa were featured in print as well as online for their research involving forensic entomology and postmortem interval. These articles include USA Today, The Advocate Newspaper, Forensic Magazine, Science News, NOLA.com, and LSU.
Additionally, this research was featured in two TikTok videos found here and here.
Alexa Figueroa attended the Northeastern Association of Forensic Scientists 2025 Annual Meeting held in Lancaster, PA from October 20-24. She gave an oral presentation titled “Development of Mass Spectral Approaches for Applications in Forensic Entomology and the Analysis of Underutilized Entomological Evidence” on October 22.
Dr. Musah traveled to Pacific Grove, CA to attend the 39th Annual ASMS Asilomar Conference on Mass Spectrometry — Forensics & Security Applications held October 10-14. She was an invited speaker for the Seized Drug session and presented “Pyrolysis of Cannabinoids: Implications for Exposure to Xenobiotics and Mind-Altering Substances” on October 13.
Niara Nichols attended the SciX 2025 Annual Conference in Covington, KY which occurred October 5-10. She gave an oral presentation titled “Let’s take a crack at it! Generating the temperature dependent profile of cannabidiol pyrolysis products using two-dimensional gas chromatography – mass spectrometry” on October 6.
Alexa and Dr Musah coauthored a publication with Dr Robert Cody and Dr Jennifer Rosati entitled Determination of the Species Identity of Necrophagous Insect Puparial Casings Using Field Desorption Mass Spectrometry that appeared in Forensic Chemistry on October 1.
Forensic Chemistry (2025), 46, 100702.
Trey Pittman joined the Musah Lab as a postdoctoral researcher on August 25. He just completed his Ph.D. at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. We are thrilled to have him here as his expertise in microfluidics devices and electrochemical sensors will expand our capabilities into new research areas.
Benni, Niara, and Alexa
Alexa, Benedetta and Niara attended the American Chemical Society National Meeting Fall 2025 in Washington D.C. August 17-21. Alexa gave an oral presentation titled “Machine learning-enhanced mass spectrometry for rapid juvenile blow fly species identification: Implications for PMI estimation.” Benedetta gave an oral presentation titled “Sulfur chemistry in the DART-MS gas stream: Implications for the interpretation of the mass spectra of organic disulfides” which was also selected for a poster presentation in the SciMix session. Niara also gave an oral presentation “Detection and identification of the pyrolysis products of a major Cannabis-derived cannabinoid — Implications for unintended exposure to xenobiotics” which was also selected for a poster presentation in the SciMix session.
The Musah Lab went on a group safari outing to the Global Wildlife Center in Folsom, LA on July 19. We toured around the 900-acre property in a large open-air trailer, taking pictures of the wildlife and learning about their conservation efforts. The wide variety of wildlife was amazing!
Dr Arathala’s article entitled A Computational Study on the Atmospheric Fate of Carbon-Centered Radicals from the 3-Methyl-2-butene-1-thiol + •OH Reaction: Mechanistic Insights and Atmospheric Implications was published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A on July 18.
J. Phys. Chem. A (2025), 129, 30, 6866–6882.
The Musah Lab acquires a customized Syft mobile lab van equipped with a SIFT-MS for real-time monitoring of air. This new system will allow us to directly monitor chemicals and environmentally relevant chemical processes occurring naturally within the atmosphere. Additionally, the data allows spatiotemporal mapping of these chemical species to identify their hotspots in the Louisiana environment.
