Hello, my name is Kyra Simmons. I am from Cincinnati, Ohio and I will be a senior at the University of Indianapolis this upcoming year. I am a Chemistry and Biology major with a concentration in Pre-Med. After finishing my undergraduate, I plan on applying to medical school and becoming a pediatric physician. This summer I am working in Dr. Ashley Ross’s lab and working on developing a new type of electrode material, nitrogen-doped graphene fibers, for improved neurotransmitter detection with my graduate mentor Blaise Ostertag. We will be going through the procedure of synthesizing the nitrogen-doped graphene microfibers, then we will be using fast-scanning cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) to measure real-time concentration changes of neurotransmitters based on voltage-dependent oxidation and reduction processes. We will be testing catecholamines, indolamines, and purines. We hope to see more enhanced detection of purines (adenosine and guanosine) than other neurotransmitters with this new type of electrode material due to the ideal interactions of purines at nitrogen-functionalized carbon substrates when used for electrochemical sensors.
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