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Dr. Nikaido joined the UCM faculty in 1998 as an adjunct instructor and was hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2002. Previously, she was a post-doctoral research associate at Vanderbilt University and a NSF post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Northwestern University’s Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, a M.S. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a B.A. in Chemistry from Northwestern University. Her doctoral and post-doctoral research focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of circadian clocks.

In 2001, Dr. Nikaido received a National Science Foundation grant to build a genetics/molecular technology laboratory at UCM. She has authored several curricular proposals for the Biology program and contributed to the creation of the Bioinformatics B.S. degree at UCM. Dr. Nikaido teaches Genetics with laboratory, Molecular Technology, Basic Genetics (online lecture), and Investigative Biology, an introductory biology course which she teaches with Dr. Jay Raveill. 

Dr. Nikaido’s research interests include expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes and hybridization and introgression of mulberry species in North America. She and her undergraduate and Master’s degree students have presented papers on these topics at regional and national conferences. Dr. Nikaido is a member of the American Chemical Society and Missouri Academy of Science.