Prof. Johannes Hell University of California, Davis, USA

Dr. Hell studied Biochemistry at the University in Tübingen (1980-1987) where he received his Diploma in Biochemistry (MS equivalent) for work at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemsitry in Göttingen with Dr. Herbert Stadler on the isolation of synaptic vesicles from frozen rodent brain. During his PhD thesis with Dr.... read moreReinhard Jahn at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich (1987-1991), Dr. Hell detected for the first uptake of GABA via the vesicular GABA transporter VGAT into synaptic vesicles. His postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington in Seattle under Dr. William A. Catterall (1991-1995) led him to identify different neuronal Calcium channels at the protein level and their regulation by protein kinase A and CaMKII. Dr. Hell was Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1996-2001), and Associate and Full Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa (2001-2009), Iowa City. In 2009, he joined the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California at Davis, where is his Professor and Vice Chair for Academic Development and the Director of the NIH/T32-supported predoctoral Training Program in Pharmacology.

Dr. Hell’s research is focused on the regulatory mechanisms of glutamate receptors and the L-type Ca channel Cav1.2 at the glutamatergic synapse in the brain and how those mechanisms related to synaptic plasticity. These mechanisms include signaling by norepinephrine, which is important for understanding long-term potentiation of synaptic transmission thought to underlying learning and memory. This signaling is affected in Alzheimer’s disease and ADHD, two areas that Dr. Hell investigates on the molecular, cellular, electrophysiological and behavioral level. His lab performs cutting edge biochemical and structural analysis which, superresolution microscopy, cell attached single channel and whole cell recordings of electric activity and synaptic transmission and behavioral tests for attention and learning including working memory.