Sean Kitayama hails from the suburbs of Los Angeles and received his B.S. with honors in bioengineering from UC Berkeley in 2018 as a Regents’ and Chancellor’s Scholar. During his undergraduate career, he worked in the laboratories of Professor Shuvo Roy at UCSF and Professor Mohammad Mofrad at UC Berkeley, using microfabrication techniques to develop implantable medical devices, ranging from bioartificial organs to biosensors. Sean is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, working under the direction of Professor Lydia Sohn, where his current projects involve utilizing novel engineering technologies to recapitulate the tumor microenvironment in vitro. He is interested in answering fundamental questions in cancer biology, specifically on the role of extracellular vesicles and cancer-stem cells in the metastatic cascade, which potentially has implications in guiding the development of future targeted therapies for metastatic cancer. Outside of lab, Sean is involved in engineering educational outreach, plays the clarinet in the university orchestra, travels avidly, and enjoys oenology and gastronomy.
Sean Eisaku Kitayama
