Yohei Niikura earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Florence, Italy in 2000, and completed his postdoctoral research at Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology in Japan, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute in the United States. He was awarded the FASEB Young Investigator Award for the 2009 FASEB Conference on Mitosis. In September 2018, he joined the MOE Key Laboratory of Model Animal for Disease Studies at the Model Animal Research Center, Medical School, Nanjing University, as a Principal Investigator and Research Professor. His current research interests include exploring the molecular mechanisms of cellular events in pediatric cancer and pediatric brain development.