Ben received his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania studying BMP signaling during dorsal-ventral patterning in the zebrafish embryo. He joined the Whited lab as a post doc in 2021. During his postdoc, he aims to identify the key genes required for blastema cell specification during axolotl limb regeneration. He is currently developing a live blastema cell reporter, which will allow him to isolate and profile blastema cells during the very first stages of blastema specification. He is also working towards a multiplex CRISPR screen to identify the key genes required for entry into the blastema cell state.