About the HEART-GeN group

Dr. Benjamin’s Bio

Born and raised in a large extended family from Indianapolis, Indiana, Dr. Kynon Jade Benjamin is proud to be the first doctor in his family. Dr. Benjamin earned his GED with the support of his mother before moving on to Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). At IUPUI, Dr. Benjamin completed his work-study placement in a neuroscience research laboratory, which started his scientific research journey. In his predoctoral studies, Dr. Benjamin designed and implemented drug-delivery and drug-development assays and developed bioinformatics pipelines for differential expression analysis in Angelman syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder. During his subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he developed computational pipelines for large-scale transcriptional (bulk and single-cell), genetic, and functional association analyses in postmortem brain tissue and cerebral and striatal brain organoids.

Throughout his research career, Dr. Benjamin’s experiences have reinforced the importance of supporting others and fostering collaborative environments. As such, he has worked to provide mentorship, serve as a role model, and advocate for opportunities for others.

Dr. Benjamin’s CV

Research program

The primary goal of our research is to improve therapeutics for underrepresented communities (i.e., personalized medicine) by investigating the influence of genetic ancestry on neurological disorders in relevant tissues. To this end, we use and develop computational tools to examine the role of genetic ancestry in the brain. In addition to this, we have established collaborations to use computational tools to address hypothesis-driven questions using publicly available single-cell and bulk-tissue data.