A very big congratulations to microbiology postdoc Dr. Akari Shinoda for being selected for a tenure-track professorship at Okayama University! Way to go Akari – we are so proud of you! Akari will continue her work on traditional dairying and Indigenous knowledge of food fermentation and microbiology.
Akari obtained her bachelor’s degree in the Department of Fermentation Science at Tokyo University of Agriculture under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Kenichiro Suzuki. She pursued her master’s and doctoral degrees at the Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences at Kyushu University under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jiro Nakayama. During her master’s and doctoral studies, she studied the association between gut microbiome, diet, and health in Mongolia. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Products Research and Infection Biology in Jena, Germany, she worked with Prof. Dr. Christina Warinner and Prof. Dr. Pierre Stallforth on exploring the impact of Mongolian dairy products on the gut microbiome of Mongolians. She will begin her professorship at Okayama University later this year.