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 at 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 as well as developed bioinformatic pipelines for differential expression analysis for Angelman syndrome - a neurodevelopmental disorder. In 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 associations analyses in postmortem brain and brain (i.e., cerebral and striatal) organoids.
Throughout his research career, Dr. Benjamin’s experiences have reinforced the critical need for diversity and creating inclusive spaces. As such, he has worked to provide mentorship and representation as well as advocate for opportunities for other underrepresented minorities.
Research program
The primary goal of our research is to improve therapeutics for under-research 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 hypothesize driven question with publically available single-cell and bulk tissues.