Aiko Sada is an Associate Professor at the International Research Center for Medical Sciences (IRCMS), Kumamoto University, Japan. She graduated from Shizuoka University with a B.S. degree in 2006, and received her Ph.D. degree from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) in 2011 for her research on RNA binding protein Nanos2 in spermatogonical stem cells under the supervision of Dr. Yumiko Saga (Sada et al., Science 2009, Stem cells 2012). After graduation, she joined Dr. Tudorita Tumbar's lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY as a postdoctoral fellow to identify and characterize stem cells and niches in the skin epidermis (Sada et al., Nat. Cell. Biol. 2016, J Invest Dermatol 2017). She is a recipient of a long-term fellowship from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and a fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

In 2016, she returned to Japan after completing her postdoctoral training and started as an Assistant Professor at the Tsukuba Advanced Research Alliance (TARA), University of Tsukuba. In October 2019, she was promoted to Associate Professor and started her own laboratory at Kumamoto University. She was awarded the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Young Scientist Award in 2021 and has been awarded various research grants from Japanese government or private foundations. Her current research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of skin regeneration and aging, and she is using mouse genetics and three-dimensional skin culture systems to elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of epidermal stem cells under physiological or pathological conditions.