David Nichols
David E. Nichols is the Robert C. and Charlotte P. Anderson Distinguished Chair in Pharmacology at Purdue University. He received the first Provost’s Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award in 2006, and was named the Irwin H. Page Lecturer in 2004 in recognition of his contributions to serotonin research. Since he began his graduate studies in 1969, Dave has focused on how the structure of a molecule affects its biological activity. He has published a total of more than 280 scientific papers and has been invited to present seminars at numerous national and international meetings. One of his primary research areas has been the study of hallucinogens (psychedelics). His breadth of knowledge about the chemistry and pharmacology of these substances is probably unrivaled in the world, as reflected in a widely cited comprehensive scientific review of hallucinogens he wrote in 2004. He has studied all of the classes of psychedelics, including a variety of mescaline analogues, tryptamines, and LSD derivatives, and a number of compounds first made in his laboratory are listed in the Shulgin’s first book PIHKAL. He published the first pharmacological studies of MDMA in 1982, showing that it released neuronal serotonin as a major component of its action, well before the rest of the world became aware of this material, and also coined the name “entactogens” for the class of MDMA-like substances. He is also the founding President of the Heffter Research Institute. Dave is an outstanding teacher, and is able to bring complicated scientific concepts to a level that is understandable to the educated lay person.
Dennis McKenna
Dennis McKenna has for the last twenty-five years pursued the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology and psychointegrator plants. He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research focussed on ethnopharmacological investigations of the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca and oo-koo-he, two orally-active tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by indigenous peoples in the Northwest Amazon. He is a founding board member and Vice-President of the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit scientific organization dedicated to the investigation of therapeutic applications for psychedelic plants and compounds.
Dr. McKenna was a primary organizer and key scientific collaborator for the Hoasca Project,an international biomedical study of Hoasca (Ayahuasca). He has conducted extensive ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. He is author and co-author of over 35 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, European Journal of Pharmacology, Brain Research, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurochemistry, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Economic Botany, and elsewhere. He is co-author, with his brother Terence, of The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (1971).
The fee for this seminar is $2,200 Euros per person, everything included, except airfare: i.e. transportation to and from the airport, double occupancy, all meals and laundry. The seminar also includes several excursions around the beautiful Island of Santa Catarina, as well as other activities.
Seminar open for a maximum of twelve participants.
If you are interested or require further information, please contact Luis Eduardo Luna at luna@wasiwaska.org or
leluna47@hotmail.com.
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