Román Macaya was born on September 19, 1966, in the State of Florida, and grew up in a bicultural household, son of a Bostonian mother and a Costa Rican father. His family moved to the port town of Puntarenas in Costa Rica when he was three years old, and later moved to the town of Guadalupe on the outskirts of San José (Costa Rica), where he grew up until graduating from high school. Macaya attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry, a minor in modern art, and played varsity tennis. After college, Macaya attended the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry. At UCLA, Macaya determined the solution structure of novel triple- and quadruple-stranded DNA structures in the laboratory of Professor Juli Feigon. Macaya later attended the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with an MBA in health care management. Macaya is first author on numerous scientific publications and lead inventor on several patent applications.
