Serving as the interim dean of the Division of Research and Graduate Studies means that Joy J. Goto leads a division of about 25 staff members. Half of the work is related to graduate studies, which entails everything from admissions to review and awarding of degrees, as well as coordination with all of the faculty program and staff coordinators for those programs. The other half concerns leading the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, including the pre-award preparation of all faculty, staff, administration grants and proposals on Fresno State’s campus. 

Fresno State’s interim dean of the Graduate and Research Department, Goto, was recently recognized by the Marjaree Mason Center as a distinguished honoree for the 40th Annual Top Ten Professional Women and Leading Business Awards. 

Honorees are nominated by those in their community who hold them in high regard. The recognition is based on Goto’s distinguished contributions and exceptional commitment to her field. 

She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCLA, Goto was also the recipient of the UCLA Alumni Association Distinguished Dissertation Year Award and the UCLA Collegium of University Teaching Fellowship. With extensive experience in bioinorganic chemistry and neuroscience, Goto contributes insight into neurodegenerative diseases, oxidative stress and mental homeostasis. 

 When Goto started graduate school at UCLA, there was a finding in the medical field that was related to Lou Gehrig’s disease. The convergence of a biomedical disease and then inorganic chemistry led her to her area of research. 

“That led me to my postdoc at Harvard Medical School, where I focused on Alzheimer’s disease,” Goto said. “Which eventually led me to City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, where I learned more about fruit flies in biomedical applications. When I started at Fresno State, I kind of brought all those ideas together to start a research program of my own to use fruit flies as a model system for studying a disease related to ALS, Parkinson’s and dementia.”

One of the biggest challenges that Goto has faced is making sure that the public and the community understand what research is and how students at Fresno State actually participate in it. Goto also wants the public to understand how the faculty integrates that into the teaching, as well as just giving the public a basic knowledge of what science is, what research involves, how much time and effort goes into it; and how much it costs. 

The most rewarding part of Goto’s career, however, has been returning to Fresno, where she was born and raised, and being able to inspire Fresno State students to pursue research. 

“Not all students research in the same way,” she said, “I think that it’s that ‘Aha!’ moment where there’s excitement in discovering something new, doing something challenging, failing at something multiple times, but eventually learning how to master a technique or simply learning something new and presenting it nationally or internationally.” 

While Goto no longer teaches as an administrator, she has experience in doing so in many different classes that involve several fields of science, including general chemistry lab, upper-division biochemistry, techniques in protein purification and analysis and the scientific method. The undergraduate and graduate students who work in Goto’s lab on various research projects have been from assorted fields, such as biology, biotechnology, chemistry, psychology and public health. She is also a faculty representative for the CSU Asian American Pacific Islander Initiative as well as a faculty advisor to many student clubs, such as Amerasia, Magkaisa and the Asian Pacific Review newspaper. 

Debbie Ikeda, founding president of Clovis Community College, is impressed with Goto. “She is a role model for younger API women as both a leader at the university as well as giving back to her community,” Ikeda said. 

Excited and humbled by the recognition, Goto credits half of it toward her work with the Asian American community and the Japanese-American Citizens League (JACL), the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organization. 

“I’ve worked closely and helped promote events and things related to communication and dialogue related to our Asian American community, specifically Japanese. That organization still gives out student scholarships every year to our local colleges and high schools and has even planned events on our own Fresno State campus,” Goto said.