Ben Larson

Assistant Professor

Dr. Larson received a BA in physics from Reed College. As a postbac researcher, he conducted research in the lab of Dr. Justin Taraska at the NIH on the molecular organization and biophysical principles of exocytosis and endocytosis. During that time, Dr. Larson also collaborated with Dr. Hari Shroff’s (NIH) and Dr. Harald Hess’s (HHMI Janelia Farm) labs on advanced microscopy methods and computational image analysis. He obtained his PhD in biophysics from UC Berkeley, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, where he studied the evolutionary cell biology of multicellular morphogenesis from a biophysical perspective in Dr. Nicole King’s lab (HHMI). He next joined Dr. Wallace Marshall’s lab at UCSF where he studied sensorimotor activity in single-celled organisms, focusing primarily on the ciliate Euplotes, a cell that can walk across surfaces using leg-like appendages. His work was supported by a Merck Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research and was recognized by the American Society for Cell Biology Porter Prize for Research Excellence. Dr. Larson joined the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an Assistant Professor in August of 2024.