Dr. Deisseroth to Deliver Wallace H. Coulter Lecture at Pittcon 2017

Pittsburgh, PA – November 30, 2016 – Pittsburgh, PA. The Pittcon Program Committee is extremely pleased to announce that Dr. Karl Deisseroth, the D.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, will deliver the Wallace H. Coulter lecture at Pittcon 2017.

His lecture “Integrated Brainwide Structural and Functional Analysis” will focus on bioanalytical application. This dynamic presentation will take place on Sunday, March 5, in McCormick Place with a complimentary mixer and poster session immediately following.

Deisseroth will discuss the development of optogenetics (a technology for controlling millisecond-scale activity patterns in specific cell types using microbial opsin genes and fiberoptic-based neural interfaces, all in freely-behaving animals including adult mammals). He will also speak on the development of hydrogel-tissue composites (e.g. his CLARITY method for creating composites of biological molecules in tissue covalently linked to acrylamide-based hydrogels, allowing removal of unlinked tissue elements to create transparency and accessibility to macromolecular labels; the resulting new structure allows high-resolution optical access to structural and molecular detail within intact tissues without disassembly). He will also discuss the application of his methods to discover the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behaviors.

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About Pittcon
Pittcon® is a registered trademark of The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a Pennsylvania non-profit organization. Co-sponsored by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh, Pittcon is the premier annual conference and exposition on laboratory science.

Proceeds from Pittcon fund science education and outreach at all levels, kindergarten through adult. Pittcon donates more than a million dollars a year to provide financial and administrative support for various science outreach activities including science equipment grants, research grants, scholarships and internships for students, awards to teachers and professors, and grants to public science centers, libraries and museums.