Department of Neuroscience Columbia University / New York, NY
Current research: The architecture and function of a neural circuit governing behavioral plasticity.
I became absolutely fascinated when I learned in my high school molecular biology class that I am made up of molecules and that even my thoughts, and behaviors derive from the intricate functioning of these molecules. This notion, rather surprising to me at the time, is at the root of my interest in neuroscience research. As an undergraduate at the University of Tokyo, I studied molecular mechanisms underlying early neural development of Xenopus in Masanori Taira’s lab. I then moved to Los Angeles, where I did my PhD study on the role of molecular diversity of Drosophila Dscam in wiring neural circuits at Larry Zipursky’s lab at UCLA. Currently I work on the function of neural circuits mediating plastic behaviors in Richard Axel’s lab at Columbia University.