Dr. Minami has 15 years of research experience in the field of neuroscience with a focus on neurodegenerative disease processes. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Irvine in neurobiology and her PhD work at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, investigating amyloid-beta, tau, and ApoE-related pathological processes in models of Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Minami completed her postdoctoral training at the Gladstone Institute for Neurological Disease in San Francisco, where she expanded her disease focus to frontotemporal dementia and investigated the common pathways underlying microglial activation and neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative disease. She received the Alzheimer's Association Young Scientist Award for her work published in Nature Medicine in 2014.

She now leads a research group at Alkahest, Inc., a biotech company located in the San Francisco Bay area, to better understand the mechanisms underlying aging and to develop novel therapies for age-related diseases.