Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida

Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida is a Research Fellow at the Center for Brain Science in Harvard University. She been fascinated by animals since her childhood, and has a strong background in animal watching, awake electrophysiology, anatomy, and molecular and cellular biology. Her lab is interested in the neural mechanism of natural behaviors driven by curiosity, threat and reward. Her current focuses include the neural mechanism of curiosity and threat in adults and babies.

She acquired a PhD from Kyoto University (Masatoshi Takeichi Lab). She then moved to Tokyo Metropolitan Institute (Atsuko Sehara Lab) as a staff scientist, and then worked in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Linda Van Aelst Lab) and Harvard University (Nao Uchida Lab) as a postdoctoral fellow, before earning an independent position in 2013. Her hobbies beyond research include watching wild animals, growing vegetables, and swimming.