Akiko completed her B.S in Biochemistry at San Francisco State University, while studying the effects of gut microbiome on neurodegenerative diseases and the genetic lineage of the Archaea Plant family in Dr. Jason Cantley’s lab. During her undergraduate education, she interned for NASA on the Lucy Mission, taking on the role of a student software engineer, coding for the IR camera to be used in test simulations in preparation for the mission launch into the Lucy asteroid belt. After graduation, Akiko took a position of Junior Specialist in Dr. Carnevale’s laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was involved with studies of human T cells and CAR-T cells via CRISPR Cas9 gene editing strategies in hematological and solid tumor models. During her time in Dr. Carnevale’s lab, Akiko optimized protocols to efficiently clone plasmids required for producing large quantities of viruses for cellular transfection and the culturing of CRISPR edited T cells.

Since joining the Atherosclerosis Research lab in August 2023, Akiko has been leading projects investigating the influence that ApoE isoforms differentially exert in modulating bioenergetic function and immunometabolism in macrophages and T lymphocytes, including through extracellular vesicles (EVs). She is also spearheading efforts to scale up the production and purification of EVs produced by cultured human macrophages for pre-clinical testing in animal models of cardiovascular and neuroinflammatory diseases. Akiko has strong research interests in the application of EVs in modulating bioenergetics and mitochondrial function in neuroimmunology, cardiology, and gut microbiology. Akiko aspires to be a physician scientist and matriculate into a MD PHD program.