Ken Yamada, PhD

RNA Therapeutics Institute, UMass Chan Medical School

Julia.Alterman(at)umassmed.edu

Ken Yamada earned his BS, MS, and PhD (2011) at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. His academic life with nucleic acid chemistry started when he was a PhD student in Mitsuo Sekine’s lab, where he cultivated his discipline as a nucleic acid chemist. After his career path led to a postdoctoral position in Masad Damha’s lab at McGill University (2012-2014) and an assistant professor position in Fumi Nagatsugi’s lab at Tohoku University (2014-2017), Ken joined Anastasia Khvorova’s lab to explore his potential as a chemist to contribute to the oligonucleotide therapeutics field. In the dynamic research culture of the Khvorova Lab, Ken is pursuing transformative therapeutic RNA backbone chemistry that broadly impacts the oligonucleotide-based therapeutics research field.