Mani Salarian

I am a second-year graduate student in Chemistry at Georgia State
University. I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and completed my Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in Chemistry in 2012 from Shahid Beheshti University. During my undergraduate studies, my researches were focused on the development of new analytical
methods to selectively determine and detect the therapeutic range of the serum concentration of different drugs such as Zonisamide (ZNS) and Carbamazepine (CBZ) with plasma and urine concentrations in trace amounts and pesticides in environmental samples. He has also worked on the development of novel nano-based materials (nanoparticles) to selectively detect and determine different toxic disease-related heavy metals at trace (very low concentrations) levels in
biological, environmental and food samples using different methods of preconcentrations such as solid phase extraction (SPE). My three-year research as an undergraduate resulted in publication of 17 papers. In 2014, one of my research papers was published in Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council website as an outstanding work in the field of nanoparticles in food science.

During my time as an undergraduate, I was the editor of three chemistry text books for high school students, and I was also the chair of Scientific Society of Chemistry Students at Shahid
Beheshti University for two years. In 2013, I joined Dr. Jenny J. Yang’s lab at Georgia State University. I am currently working
on two projects involved with developing therapeutic methods through the pharmacological and molecular disruption of the pathways involved in gap junction regulation and studying disease-linked residues specific mutations which result in a lack of cell-cell communication, and their effects on the molecular mechanisms for regulation of gap junction functions by both extracellular and intracellular Ca2+, and development and engineering of protein-based MRI contrast agents for molecular imaging of cancer biomarkers. My research is currently funded by National Institute of Health (NIH). I also maintain instruments both in my lab and the
chemistry department such as ICP-OES and circular dichroism and also maintaining his research group website