Mei Shen, an assistant professor of chemistry, will present "High spatiotemporal resolution electroanalysis for understanding brain function and diseases" at the Beckman Institute Director's Seminar at noon Thursday, April 4.
The seminar will be held in 1005 Beckman Institute. Lunch will be provided to participants who register in advance.
Mei Shen."High spatiotemporal resolution electroanalysis for understanding brain function and diseases"
(Nano)electrochemistry has broadly impacted various disciplines. The Shen Lab studies chemical neurotransmission dynamics at synapses, neuromuscular junctions, and single cells by developing new nanoelectrodes coupled with scanning electrochemical microscopy, or SECM. Shen’s group has pioneered nano liquid/liquid interface electrodes for the real-time quantification of cholinergic neurotransmitters around the single synapse and the single cell. A second focus is to answer unknown questions in cancer and neurodegeneration by monitoring rapid neurotransmitter dynamics in mice brain with Fast Scan Cyclic Voltammetry and implantable sensors. By expanding the electroanalytical toolbox to include both redox-active (e.g., dopamine, serotonin) and redox-inactive (e.g., cholinergic) neurotransmitters, her research has introduced exciting prospects to understand neuronal communication and decipher brain functions.
Mei Shen is an assistant professor of chemistry at Illinois and is affiliated with the Beckman Institute, the Cancer Center at Illinois, the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology, Department of Bioengineering, and the Neuroscience Program. Her research aims to push the limits of electroanalytical chemistry in bioanalysis, especially for the real-time interrogation of multiple groups of chemical transmitters with nanometer spatial resolution and high temporal resolution. She received her Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin with Allen J. Bard and did her postdoctoral work with Shigeru Amemiya at the University of Pittsburgh. Shen aspires to be a (female) role model to her students. Her distinctions include Award for Excellence in Guiding Undergraduate Research, the NSF CAREER Award, Scialog: Microbiome, Neurobiology and Disease Collaborative Awards, ACS Arthur F. Findeis Award for Achievements by a Young Analytical Scientist, CACS Rising Star Award and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry. Shen has created the Nanoelectrochemistry And Neuroscience Outreach, or NANO, Education Program to introduce science in early childhood.
