Benjamin Yellen's Biography

Benjamin Yellen, Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University

Benjamin Yellen is an Associate Professor at Duke University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, with a secondary appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department. His research interests lay at the intersection of electromagnetic field theory, nonlinear dynamics & controls, and colloid & surface science, for applications in materials science and biomedical devices. Yellen has more than 50 publications, many in high impact journals, including Nature and PNAS, and he has received funding from NSF, NIH, DARPA, and other non-governmental agencies to support his research. In 2014, Yellen was the recipient of the CNIHR (Creative and Novel Ideals for HIV Research) award, which brings scientists without prior HIV research experience and fresh ideas into the field. Towards this end, Yellen has initiated collaboration with colleagues at the medicals schools of Duke and UNC to apply magnetic control mechanisms for organizing large arrays of single cells on chip. The goal of these manipulations is to uncover kinetic epigenetic relationships in the maintenance of latency in HIV-1 infected CD4 single cells, and in the eradication of latent cell reservoirs through the real-time analysis of cytolytic interactions between CD4 and CD8 single cell pairs.