Presenter: Parastoo Hashemi, MSci, PhD
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Wayne State University

Hashemi received an MSc in Chemistry from King’s College in London in 2004. She carried out her PhD under Dr. Martyn Boutelle in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in Imperial College, London and graduated in 2007. She performed her post-doc with Professor Mark Wightman in the Department of Chemistry at UNC Chapel Hill from 2007-2011 and started her independent position in the Department of Chemistry at Wayne State University in 2011. Hashemi has pioneered a unique set of analytical tools that define her unique interdisciplinary program of probing the brain’s chemistry with ultra-microelectrodes.

Objectives: By the end of the session participants should be able to:

1)  Name at least 4 characteristics of voltammetry that make it an ideal tool for in vivo neurochemical analyses.
2)  Identify at least 3 novel mechanistic insights into serotonin neurochemistry.
3)  Describe the mechanisms by which the efficacy of commercially available antidepressants can potentially be predicted neurochemically in the pre-clinical stages of drug development.