Aya Takeoka majored in Neuroscience at Oberlin College in Ohio before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she finished a PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology. There, Aya studied circuit plasticity for motor recovery after spinal cord injury with Patricia Phelps and Reggie Edgerton. She then moved to Fredrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Science (FMI) in Basel, Switzerland for postdoctoral training. Combining mouse genetics, high-resolution kinematic analysis, virus-mediated circuit manipulation and reconstruction, Aya studied how proprioceptive afferents and their activity regulate circuit plasticity in the context of motor control in Silvia Arber’s lab. In 2016, Aya established her laboratory at Neuroelectronics Research Flanders (www.nerf.be) at Flanders Institute for Biotechnology in Leuven, Belgium. In 2024, she moved her lab to RIKEN Center for Brain Science. Her Laboratory for Motor Circuit Plasticity at RIKEN takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding how the mammalian central nervous system controls movements, how motor memories are formed, stored, and recalled, and plasticity underlie recovery after damage to the CNS.

Awards

• Young Investigator Award, GSKE/FMRE Queen Elizabeth Medical Foundation for Neuroscience, 2020
• Young Investigator Award, Japanese Society for Neuroscience, 2019
• International Foundation for Research in Paraplegia post-doctoral fellowship
• Edith Hyde Fellowship, UCLA
• UCLA Physiological Science Fellowship
• High honors in Neuroscience, Nancy Robell Prize in Neuroscience, Merck Award in Chemistry, Oberlin College, 2003
• Norman C. Craig ’53 Endowed Chemistry Scholarship Award, Oberlin College, 2002