Dr. Nako Nakatsuka

Nako Nakatsuka was raised in Tokyo, Japan and moved to the United States to pursue a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry at Fordham University in New York. She then moved to California to pursue her Ph.D. at UCLA and worked in the labs of Professors Anne M. Andrews and Paul S. Weiss. In her PhD, she designed and developed DNA-based biosensors for small-molecule sensing in complex environments. In 2018, Nako received the ETH postdoctoral fellowship and joined the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics led by Professor Janos Vörös. Currently as a senior scientist at ETH, her research is focused on interfacing DNA-based biosensors that can detect neurochemicals at biological interfaces such as live cells.