Ken Yamada, PhD, works on the chemical biology of nucleic acids, including DNA and RNA, and shorter oligonucleotides. He received his PhD under the supervision of Professor Mitsuo Sekine at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he studied a variety of novel chemically modified nucleoside analogues. As a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, Dr. Yamada became involved in chemical biology and the development of antisense oligonucleotides. He began his academic career as an assistant professor in IMRAM at TOHOKU University, then left to train in Professor Anastasia Khvorova’s oligonucleotide therapeutics research lab in the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. In the Khvorova Lab, Dr. Yamada invented a transformative novel oligo backbone chemistry, which has grown to be the platform technology in the lab. Dr. Yamada was promoted to assistant professor in 2021.