Benjamin Haas started with RIPE in 2018 as a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois and is currently the Crop Transformation Pipeline Manager at the Crop Transformation Facility (CTF) at Illinois' Research Park. He is overseeing a portion of the DNA assembly and soy transformation projects for RIPE. Additionally, he is interested in using gene editing to identify and modify gene regulatory regions that influence photoprotection. Benjamin earned his bachelor's and master’s degree in biotechnology 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.