I'm a high school student in Katy, Texas, and I find research and building things with other people deeply fulfilling. I'm a research intern in GI Medical Oncology at MD Anderson, and I've been lucky to learn from Dr. Mohamed Nuh, Dr. Monica Hsiang, and Dr. Akhila Madulapalli Reddy at Baylor College of Medicine. I'm also working on DRAIN, which applies electrochemical engineering to neural interfaces, with Dr. Mim Rahimi at the University of Houston and Dr. Oleh Pochynyuk at UTHealth Houston. Outside the lab, I started two nonprofits: Third Author, which connects teens with local professionals, and Onco Research Scholars, which helps students get started in research. I also co-founded Layer, where I'm CTO and CMO, and Sutura Genomics, where I'm CTO, with a great team. You can follow along on Instagram at @seangplee.
Updates
- Mar 2027 Presenting at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference in Utah.
- Dec 2026 ePoster at the ESMO Asia Congress in Singapore.
- Oct 2026 Working on DRAIN with Dr. Mim Rahimi (University of Houston) and Dr. Oleh Pochynyuk (UTHealth Houston).
- Oct 2026 Founded Third Author, interviewing professors.
- Oct 2026 Designed ChronoFlow, LATCH Knee, and FlexTome (projects).
- 2026 Co-founded Layer as CTO and CMO.
- Sep 2026 Poster accepted at the NeurIPS 2026 LP4FM workshop.
- Jul 2026 Working with a team of interns on PhysioCheck, a biomedical AI-safety benchmark.
- Jul 2026 Posted a spatial-transcriptomics preprint on bioRxiv.
- Jul 2026 Preregistered a napabucasin Phase 3 meta-analysis on OSF.
- Jun 2026 Accepted to Y Combinator Startup School (ticket).
- Jun 2026 First-author pSTAT3 abstract published in The Oncologist.
- Jun 2026 Volunteered at Texas Children's Hospital (video).
- 2026 Sponsored by my MD Anderson professor to attend the ASCO and AACR conferences.
- May 2026 Presented at the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Annual Conference as its youngest presenter.
- Apr 2026 Co-founded Sutura Genomics as CTO.
- Mar 2026 Built the Research Brain, an AI research system (graph).
- Jan 2026 Founded Onco Research Scholars.
- Jul 2025 Attended the DAVANCO oncology symposium in Bermuda.