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Armando Avallone, M.S., U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Laboratories and Scientific Services (LSS), Senior Chemist, Houston, Texas

Armando Avallone serves as the Lead Chemist in narcotic odor characterization for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Laboratories and Scientific Services at the Southwest Regional Science Center located in Houston, Texas. He has enhanced the analytical methodologies employed by the laboratory to assess pseudo training aid production, characterized fentanyl seizures to determine trends in odor profiles, analyzed narcotic seizures for the development of better representative live training aids, and developed a novel sorption training aid for canine training practices. He is also the lead trainer for the Houston Laboratory, instructs controlled substance analysts in proper analytical procedures, and spends part of his time running an Introduction to CBP class in Ashburn VA for new LSS hires.

Prior to joining CBP 2008, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Universidade Federal de Goias in Goiania, Brasil where he did research on pesticides used on vegetables. Before arriving at the LSS Houston Laboratory, he spent several years at the LSS San Francisco Laboratory where he learned numerous different analytical techniques including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Raman Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, and Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry. He was awarded the Commissioner’s Award in 2023 for his work in training canine teams in the detection of fentanyl. He earned his B.S. in Environmental Toxicology at the University of California at Riverside in 1995 and M.S. in Environmental Chemistry at the State University of New York – Environmental Science and Forestry School in 2004.