Biography

Dr. Kyoko Konishi is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Division of Women’s Health. Dr. Konishi received her PhD in neuroscience from McGill University, Canada with support from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec en Santé and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Konishi has a long-standing interest in the field of aging research and, more specifically, in understanding factors that contribute to healthy aging. During her PhD, Dr. Konishi investigated genetic, non-genetic, and lifestyle factors that influence hippocampal integrity in healthy aging. She was interested in the APOE and BDNF genes and non-genetic and lifestyle factors such as cognitive function, cholesterol, and dietary habits. Under the mentorship of Dr. Jill Goldstein, Dr. Konishi is currently an NIA-supported Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA fellow in the Harvard Translational Research in Aging Training Program. Her research interests include sex differences in the brain, which are critical for understanding sex differences in Alzheimer’s disease. She is investigating how genes and hormones regulate memory circuitry aging in early midlife, in a sex-dependent manner. Her overall goals are to 1) identify target populations for clinical trials by investigating early physiological, genetic, and brain markers of cognitive decline and 2) understand why women have a higher frequency of Alzheimer’s disease compared to men and translate this knowledge to clinical applications.