Rate My Professor Yukiko Gotoh

Yukiko Gotoh is Professor and Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at The University of Tokyo, where she also serves as Principal Investigator and Deputy Director of the International Research Center for Neurointelligence. She earned her B.Sc. in 1987, M.S. in 1989, and Ph.D. in 1992 from the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, The University of Tokyo, under the supervision of Hikoichi Sakai and Eisuke Nishida. Following her doctorate, she conducted postdoctoral research with Jonathan A. Cooper at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and with Michael E. Greenberg at Harvard Medical School before returning to The University of Tokyo to establish her independent laboratory.

Gotoh’s research examines the mechanisms and principles that regulate neural stem and progenitor cell fate during mammalian brain development and in adult homeostasis, including genetic and epigenetic controls, the embryonic origins of adult neural stem cells, and implications for neurodevelopmental disorders. She has held prior appointments as Associate Professor and then Professor at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, The University of Tokyo. Among her honors are the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Prize, the Japan Academy Medal, the Tsukahara Prize, the Inoue Prize for Science, the Yasuda Memorial Foundation Prize for Medicine, the Kihara Memorial Foundation Academic Award, the Takeda Prize for Medical Science, the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Government of Japan, and the 2026 Japan Academy Prize. She is an EMBO Associate Member, a member of the Science Council of Japan, and serves on the editorial or advisory boards of journals including Neuron, Journal of Cell Biology, Development, The EMBO Journal, Molecular Psychiatry, Stem Cell Reports, and Genes to Cells.