Yukiko Goda

Goda was born in Osaka, but grew up between Japan and Canada because her father worked in a trading company.^[1] She was at high school in Toronto, and secured a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto.^[1] Despite initially considering literature, Goda became interested in science during her undergraduate studies, and spent her summer holidays on research placements in chemistry and biology.^[1] She worked in Jack Greenblatt's laboratory, where she studied bacteriophage transcription.^[1][2] She trained in cell biology, and completed her doctoral research at Stanford University with Suzanne Pfeffer, where she studied vesicular transport from endosomes to the Golgi complex.^[3] She completed a course on developmental neurobiology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she learned that Stevens' group were investigating synaptic plasticity in vivo.^[1] Goda moved to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies as a postdoctoral researcher with Charles F. Stevens,^[2] where she specialised in electrophysiology, and studied how neurons alter their synaptic strengths.^[4][1] Goda eventually set up her own laboratory at University of California, San Diego.^[1] In 2001, she moved to the Medical Research Council at University College London.^[2]

In 2011, Goda returned to Japan, where she established her own research group at Riken.^[5] She joined the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in 2022.^[5] Her research has uncovered the processes involved in trans-synaptic interactions.^[2] Goda has dedicated her career to understanding the molecular mechanisms of synaptic function, including synaptic homeostasis and other types of plasticity.^[1]