Yukiko Yano Appointed Tenure-Track Investigator in DCEG

Yukiko Yano, Ph.D., M.P.H., was appointed Earl Stadtman tenure-track investigator in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch in June 2026. Dr. Yano’s research combines epidemiology and molecular methods to better understand the etiology of upper aerodigestive trace (UADT) cancers and the role of the human microbiome in these cancers.

Dr. Yano joined DCEG as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019 and was selected as an NIH Independent Research Scholar in 2022. Her research has offered important insight into novel etiologies and mechanisms of UADT cancers, which include cancers of the head and neck, esophagus, and stomach. She has also contributed to understanding the effect of alcohol consumption on specific UADT cancers and helped identify novel biomarkers to evaluate alcohol exposures. In addition, her analyses of data from large prospective cohorts and NHANES have improved existing methods to study the human microbiome and revealed how microbial communities impact health and disease outcomes.

As an Earl Stadtman investigator, Dr. Yano will continue to integrate advanced molecular methods with epidemiologic studies to address important but understudied areas of the etiology of UADT cancers. Using population-based studies and biomarker analyses, she aims to further uncover etiologic differences across head and neck cancers—particularly within the oral cavity—and study the mechanistic underpinnings of alcohol’s impact on cancer risk. She will also expand on her microbiome work to understand links with UADT cancers and develop new methodologies to characterize microbial exposures.

Dr. Yano’s research has had a global health focus, taking her to resource-limited, populations with high rates of UADT cancers and will use these insights to better inform our understanding of these understudied cancers in the US. Over time, she aims to conduct new field studies in understudied communities with high risk of UADT cancers and continue strengthening relationships with international colleagues, including researchers in the African Esophageal Cancer Consortium.

Dr. Yano received her Ph.D. in environmental health sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, where her doctoral research examined fetal exposures and childhood leukemia using biomarker-based approaches. She earned her M.P.H. in environmental health from Emory University.