Hiroyuki Kato, Associate Professor

Hiroyuki received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from University of Tokyo where he worked with Dr. Toshiya Manabe to learn electrophysiology. He completed his postdoctoral work with Dr. Jeffry Isaacson in UCSD, where he learned in vivo imaging/recording techniques in awake, behaving mice.

Hiroyuki started the lab in 2017 in the Department of Psychiatry and the Neuroscience Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Hailey Acosta,
Research Technician

Hailey received her bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience and Psychology at Boston University in 2024. At BU, she studied the effects of caffeine in a cellular model of Huntington's disease as well as dopamine's role in altering alcohol preference in fruit flies. She joined the Kato lab in April 2024.

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Hiroaki Tsukano, M.D./Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow

Hiroaki received his M.D./Ph.D. at the Department of Neurophysiology and Brain Research Institute, Niigata University in 2011. At Niigata University, he worked with Dr. Katsuei Shibuki to understand the anatomical organization of auditory pathway in the mouse brain. After his career as an assistant professor in the Niigata University, he joined the Kato Lab in April 2019 to study the neural circuits underlying innate auditory behaviors.

Gates Schneider, Ph.D. Student

Gates received her Bachelor of Science in Behavioral Neuroscience from Northeastern University in 2020. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a research assistant in lab of Dr. Kay Tye at the Salk Institute where she studied social homeostasis and the neural representations of social isolation. She is a rising second year PhD student in the Neuroscience Curriculum at UNC and joined the Kato Lab in April of 2024.

Melanie Andrade-Muñoz, Undergraduate Student

Mel is an undergraduate student at UNC, majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Chemistry. She joined the Kato Lab in March 2025.

Kaavya Thillaivanan, Undergraduate Student

Kaavya is an undergraduate student at UNC, majoring in Neuroscience and Data Science. She joined the Kato Lab in December 2025.

 
 

Lab Alumni

  • Amber Kline (PhD student, currently a postdoc at New York University)

  • Destinee Aponte (research technician, currently a PhD student at Harvard Medical School Neuroscience Program)

  • Koun Onodera (postdoc, currently Assistant Professor at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan)

  • Jose Rodríguez-Romaguera (postdoc, currently Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

  • Randall Ung (MD-PhD student, currently an MD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

  • Taha Lodhi (undergraduate student, currently an MD student at East Carolina University)

  • Divya Narayanan (undergraduate student, currently a research technician at Harvard Medical School)

  • Jason Xie (undergraduate student, currently an MS student at the University of Pennsylvania Science Engineering Program)

  • Suning Chen (undergraduate student, currently an MS student at the University of California, San Diego)

  • Muneshwar Mehra (postdoc, currently at Duke University)

  • Michellee Garcia (research technician, currently a PhD student at UT Southwestern, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences)

  • Pranathi Dandu (undergraduate student, currently an MS student at NC State University)