Yuka has been a Team Director at the Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, RIKEN, since 2023. Her research is centered on uncovering the functions of non-protein-coding regions of the genome, particularly focusing on non-coding RNAs and transposable elements. Yuka completed her undergraduate and graduate studies in computational biology under the supervision of Professors Masaru Tomita and Akio Kanai at Keio University, Japan. For her PhD research, she was primarily based at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, where she conducted combined experimental and computational analyses of microRNA function as a visiting PhD student. Following her PhD, she joined Professors Haruhiko and Mikiko Siomi’s group at Keio University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral researcher and later became an Associate Professor. In this role, she investigated the molecular mechanisms of PIWI-piRNA-mediated regulation of transposable elements.