Here’s Ben’s story, along with some links to stuff that he’s proud of…
Ben grew up in the small town of Carlinville, Illinois, the son of two science teachers. A Cubs fan from Cardinal territory, he got used to swimming against the tide.
At Elmhurst College, he majored in Chemistry and was highly active (yea, one of those…) in student government, music, and founded/led the Secular Student Association. His proudest accomplishment was getting the student government to fully fund and anonymize on campus student testing for sexually transmitted infections.
At the University of Chicago, he started out an organic chemist, became a Chemistry-Biology Interface Fellow, and finished his Ph.D. as a biochemist in the labs of Robert Keenan and Ron Rock. He used single-molecule microscopy to unravel the structures and mechanisms of multimeric membrane proteins, tough buggers to work with. He also supported the unionization of graduate workers.
While in graduate school, he ran the Chicago Sunday Assembly, played in a band, and taught at the Field Museum on weekends about T Rex, human evolution, the “Evolving Planet”, and the biology of size.
In 2018, he became a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow and moved from Chicago to Washington, DC, working in the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation. At the Pentagon, he conducted analysis and advocated for changes to the DOD’s role in domestic disaster response.
With 4 fellow fellows, he hosted and produced the podcast Beltway Science about issues at the interface of science and public policy.
In 2019, he began working at the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, Office of Export Control Cooperation. He managed a team providing assistance to customs, border security, and trade officials in the Western Balkans. Ben was named after Benjamin Franklin, so being a scientist/diplomat was pretty cool, as was winning the State Department’s “Franklin Award” for service during the COVID-19 pandemic. He worked to move (drag, kicking and screaming) the State Department into the 21st century.
In 2022, after 3 years at the State Department, he left for the startup company Solugen in Houston and then worked as a Senior Technical Advisor at the nonprofit, CRDF Global. In 2023, he returned to the Department of Defense to work on export controls. Who knows what might be next!
In 2022, he got married and became a dad!
Since 2020, Ben has been thinking about the policy intersection of climate change with nonproliferation and strategic trade management. His latest contribution to that space is about to be published in the Strategic Trade Review, and he’s looking to build on that work…
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