Intersecting Volunteerism and Engineering To Improve Cancer Bioengineering
Jose Meza Llamosas, E’25, bioengineering, combined his interest in helping communities with engineering, which led to a passion for cancer research and, ultimately, a nomination for the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship to pursue a PhD.
Originally from Lima, Peru, the first impression Jose Meza Llamosas, E’25, bioengineering, had of the U.S. was in 2022 after he transferred from the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima. There weren’t enough research opportunities or advanced classes to sustain his growing academic pursuits, and Northeastern’s College of Engineering had a wealth of academic and research options.
Annual Recognition Banquet from all cultural professional student organizations of the college of engineering in Spring 2024.
Northeastern’s culture and community are unlike UTEC in Lima. Settling into a new way of life and a new language was challenging and confusing, but his transition was made easier by support and mentorship. During his first semester, he joined the Latinx Student Cultural Center’s mentorship program, PODER, and met Richard Harris, associate dean of outreach, engagement, and belonging in the College of Engineering. Harris introduced Meza LIamosas to Northeastern’s Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers student chapter. Meza LIamosas’s part in fulfilling the organization’s goal to “enable Latinos in the New England area to pursue, obtain, and develop successful careers” was to work with companies to acquire sponsorships.
Intersecting volunteerism and engineering
In Meza LIamosas’ first semester, an unlikely kinship was forged in his Cornerstone of Engineering service-learning class taught by Kathryn Schulte Grahame’s, teaching professor and associate director of the First-Year Engineering program. The class’s goal was to create a semester-long project directed for elementary and middle school students. Every other week, the class traveled to an elementary school in Revere to lead students through STEM activities.
Presentation at the fall 2022 Cornerstone of Engineering Expedition.
“It was very fulfilling to work with young kids and tell them that a career in engineering or STEM is possible,” he says. “It was a core experience that reinforced my commitment to helping communities through engineering.”
Seeking to further his relationships with young Hispanic students and their parents, Meza LIamosas chose to be a teaching assistant for the class the following semester. His fall semester ended with a chance event with the Panama Project of Northeastern’s Student Chapter of the Engineers Without Borders. He was the translator for an engineering project trip to Panama, where the club was working to increase water distribution in rural communities.
Finding volunteer work that intersects with engineering became a passion that drove him to seek out more opportunities to support the Hispanic and Latinx communities at Northeastern and abroad. To fulfill his dedication to peace, education, and global citizenship, Meza LIamosas decided to serve in national and international positions at CISV International, which, according to their website, “is dedicated to educating and inspiring for peace through building inter-cultural friendship, cooperation, and understanding.” These extracurricular activities cultivated interpersonal skills that Meza LIamosas believes to be important in the engineering field.
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 Meza LIamosas participated in the Panama Project which is a part of Northeastern’s Student Chapter of Engineers Without Borders located in the rural communities of Las Delicias and La Pedregosa in Panama |
The path to cancer research
The certainty Meza LIamosas had about service learning and volunteer work didn’t give him any insight into his desired bioengineering concentration. It took a co-op on the other side of the country in Redwood City, California, for Meza LIamosas to determine his interest in cancer bioengineering.
His goal at Revolution Medicine was to determine how detrimental inhibiting the expression of one gene would be to a cancer cell line—a group of cancer cells used as a model in a laboratory setting to study cancer biology and potential treatments. His goal was to identify what genes to target for optimal drug effectiveness in treating cancers caused by mutations in the RAS gene family, particularly the KRAS gene, which are responsible for the growth and migration of cells. The technical work was valuable, but meeting real patients who benefited from the outcomes of this research was what struck Meza LIamosas the most.
Revolution Medicine invited a patient, Terri Conneran, to talk about her experience during clinical trials and about the community she built called KRAS Kickers, which she grew to be a non-profit advocacy organization. “I saw how impactful this field can be to change people’s lives, even those who thought they had no other chance. I never thought I would go into the medical field until this experience that showed me the impact we have in patients’ lives,” he says.
“I noticed how advanced oncology treatments are in the U.S. compared to my home country, Peru. It helped me realize the importance of advanced degrees. It was what motivated me to pursue a PhD in that area. And I’ll be able to transfer this knowledge back home,” he adds.
Meza LIamosas presented his poster based on the research he conducted during his Computational Biology Summer Internship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2024.
The summer after this co-op, Meza Llamosas worked as a research assistant at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Every day of the ten-week internship, he worked with renowned oncology doctors. The center even hosted speakers who were among the first researchers to design targeted therapeutics for cancer in the ’80s and ’90s, and “simply being in their presence was inspiring,” he recalls. Even walking through the hospital and seeing patients undergoing life-changing treatments was an experience that solidified his passion for cancer bioengineering.
Then, the following fall semester, Meza LIamosas began his second co-op at Blueprint Medicines, a biotechnology company that develops and commercializes clinical-stage therapeutics. He wanted to transition from medical development to learning how to better apply existing treatment methods. The issue the team was looking to solve was the invasiveness of biopsies for clinical testing of a drug. They were looking for a less invasive sampling method, like a blood sample, which provides the same information as a biopsy.
With this last research experience, Meza LIamosas felt he had a grasp of a handful of the many applications of cancer bioengineering. He had the realization that there is a lot he doesn’t know about the field, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it leaves so much for him to explore in the future.
Meza LIamosas was recognized as a Distinguished Scholar by the Undergraduate Research and Fellowships Office (URF) for the Knight-Hennessy Scholars.
“If I truly want to make an impact, I need to spend more time learning. This is why I want a PhD; taking those 5-6 years to truly understand the field will elevate my impact. I would be better equipped to translate my insights into therapeutic applications for patients,” he says.
For all his efforts and accomplishments, Meza Llamosas was nominated for the 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholarship, which honors up to 100 high-achieving students from around the world who demonstrate independent thought, purposeful leadership, and a civic mindset. Accepted students can pursue a fully funded graduate degree with stipends at Stanford University.
 Meza LIamosas participated in the Peruvian delegation at the CISV Global Forum 2024 hosted in Eindhoven, Netherlands. |
Growing up in Peru, Meza LIamosas believed the concept of accessible medical care was a privilege many people did not have. Advanced oncology treatment was a foreign concept, but the ever-growing bioengineering cancer research inspires Meza LIamosas to create accessible treatment methods.
“It’s one thing to be able to study cancer treatments, but it’s another thing to be able to apply what you’ve studied to the real world.”