Waka is a visiting scholar from Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, a pharmaceutical company in Japan. Waka joined the Lodato Lab in 2024 to study single-cell genomics analysis, focusing on somatic mutations in brain cells. Waka received her Ph.D. in Social Medicine from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine. At the Lodato Lab, Waka focuses on cell lineage analysis using somatic mutations. This research aims to investigate how genomic alterations in the brain affect aging and age-related neurological disorders.