Ben is co-advised by Professors Suzie Pun and Patrick Stayton in the Bioengineering department. He is developing polymeric biomaterials for targeted drug delivery, with a particular interest in advancing the state-of-the-art of cancer vaccines and kidney therapeutics. The efficacy of promising drug candidates is often hampered by delivery constraints, such as rapid clearance from the body and/or off-target toxicity, more simply, they do not stay at the right place for the right amount of time to work. Ben’s work can change that incorporating drugs into polymers can help them stay in certain bodily compartments for longer, and adding targeting molecules to polymer chains can help them hone in on certain cells that they need to act upon. He likes to think of his work as bringing miracle molecules that kill cancer cells in a petri dish to full clinical approval and into patients’ hands. He holds a B.E. in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University.