PhD student named 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow
April 30, 2025
Tomomi Yoshida, a sixth-year PhD candidate in Immunobiology, is one of 32 early career researchers named as a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow to pursue innovative interdisciplinary science.
Now in its eighth year, the fellowship provides financial support for a postdoctoral placement of one to two years at a world-class research institution. The funding equips scientists to apply their knowledge to a new field of study with the goal of accelerating discoveries, and to develop their leadership potential. The program supports research in any of the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, or computing.
Yoshida is in the laboratories of David Hafler, MD, FANA, William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology, Professor of Immunobiology, Chair, Neurology, and Andrew Wang, MD/PhD, AB, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine (Rheumatology).
Yoshida's research focuses on the properties and function of a rare subset of T cells that exist in the healthy brain. Notably, she found that these T cells share ontogeny from those primed in the gastrointestinal tract. Her work challenges the notion of immune privilege in the brain and establishes a novel cellular gut-brain axis.
As a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow, Yoshida will pivot from immunology to neuroscience to investigate how different types of inflammation affect the engagement of CVO neural circuits that regulate physiology and behavior. Yoshida’s goal is to reveal a new mechanism of brain-body crosstalk, which could be applied to develop treatments for mitigating sickness-related symptoms and harmful immune responses that are evident in many diseases.