Yitshak Zohar, PhD
Dr. Zohar received his BSc & MSc degrees from the Israel Institute of Technology in 1981 & 1984, respectively, and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 1990. After serving as a Research Associate at USC & UCLA, 1990-1992, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor in 1992 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2000. Dr. Zohar is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at the University of Arizona since 2004. He is affiliated with the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the BIO5 Institute and the Cancer Center.
Cancer Focus
Dr. Zohar started to develop microfluidic systems for applications in life and health sciences in 2000 with a focus on cancer research. Topics of interest included selective isolation of bio species such as circulating tumor cells from blood samples; DNA separation; dissociation of human tissues into single cells; and microfluidic models for organ-specific extravasation of circulating tumor cells. Recently he has been concentrating on bioengineered organs-on-chips - particularly for lung, prostate, and breast cancer - enabling ex-vivo studies of human tumor microenvironment to gain insight into the underlying biological mechanisms involved in cancer development.