Education:

B.Sc. Faculty of Applied Biological Science, Hiroshima University, Japan.

M.Sc., Graduate School of Biosphere Sciences, Hiroshima Univ., Japan.
Ph.D. (Physical Chemistry), Graduate School of Science, Osaka Univ., Japan.

Experience:
Research Associate, Hiroshima Univ., Faculty of Applied Biological Science.
Golda Meir Research Fellow, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Postdoctoral Fellow, LBNL, Physical Biosciences Division, Berkeley, CA.
Current: Senior Scientist, and Division Deputy for Science at the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division, LBNL.

Junko Yano came to Berkeley in 2001 as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Physical Biosciences Division at LBNL, advancing to become a Staff Research Associate (2003), Career Scientist (2006), and a Staff Scientist (2010).  Presently, she is a Senior Scientist (2015), and Division Deputy for Science (2020) in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division. Her research focus is with problems of importance to energy, especially renewable energy sources. Her group uses X-ray spectroscopy and crystallography to understand biological and inorganic systems, and studying how in photosynthesis, plants use light to split water using a catalytic Mn₄Ca cluster, and converting light energy into chemical energy. Since the advent of X-ray free electron lasers (XFELs), her group has been using these facilities to study the catalytic systems, under functional conditions at room temperature. These methods allow one to study structure-function relationships by following the reactions in real time and the effect of the environment of the protein on the active site.

Junko is a member of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), where she studies artificial photosynthetic systems, combining her interests in natural photosynthesis/metalloenzymes with inorganic systems that can be used to engineer practical devices.