Ben Haas

Benjamin Haas was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois and now is currently the Crop Transformation Pipeline Manager at the Crop Transformation Facility (CTF) at Illinois' Research Park, leading some of the RIPE project's DNA assembly work. His research focuses on trying to increase the energy available to the plant by modifying its response to changing light conditions. For the RIPE project, he will be using gene-editing to identify and effectively alter gene regulatory regions that influence photoprotection. Benjamin earned his bachelor's degree in food science and biotechnology from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He earned his master's degree in biotechnology also from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He is a recipient of the Marshall Plan Scholarship to complete his master thesis work at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.