Haru Yamamoto

Haru Yamamoto is a first-year MD-PhD student from Yokohama, Japan and Greenwood, Indiana. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2022 with a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology and a minor in Data Science. As an undergraduate, Haru worked with Dr. Robert Edwards in the UCSF Department of Neurology and Physiology to investigate the molecular and cellular machinery that underly synaptic physiology. He particularly studied the normal function of the presynaptic protein α-synuclein that is implicated in Parkinson's disease (PD) to understand how the perturbation of its role in synaptic transmission and interactions with various genetic determinants of PD may lead to neurodegeneration and pathogenesis. After graduation, he continued his endeavors in the Edwards Lab as a research assistant and managed the Team Edwards grant as a project manager for the Aligning Sciences Across Parkinson's (ASAP) program to study the dual role of neural activity in PD, working alongside leading scientists and physicians in the field worldwide. Haru's current research interests broadly lie in molecular and cellular neuroscience, neurodegeneration, and neurodegenerative diseases.