Awarded in 2026
Home Department: Bioengineering
Faculty Advisors: Steven Banik (Chemistry), Polly Fordyce (Bioengineering and Genetics), and Ron Dror (Computer Science)

Research Title: Mapping the Undruggable Proteome

Most drugs begin with a molecule that binds a disease-driving protein, and finding one can take a chemist years. For thousands of proteins driving cancer and inflammatory disease, no binding molecule is known. Benjamin is building a platform that tests millions of molecule-protein pairs at once, producing chemical starting points for new drugs and a foundational dataset to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery.