Speakers - NWC 2023

Biography

Benjamin J. Umlauf, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Dell Medical School. His research is focused on developing solutions for unmet clinical needs using immunological, biological, and chemical techniques. Significant foci include the development of novel therapies for treating solid tumors, identification of targeting ligands using multiple platforms including viral, yeast, and bacterial systems, a site-specific combination of biological and synthetic chemistry products, and enhancing the accumulation of blood-brain barrier penetrating drugs within the central nervous system.

Dr. Umlauf began his research career at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, then attended graduate school at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX, where he received a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology. He next went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his postdoctoral fellowship in the departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Neurosurgery.

His previous work includes identifying lung cancer-targeting ligands with defined subcellular trafficking patterns, the development of novel peptide-based immunotherapy platforms, and discovering methods to target encephalopathies via blood-brain barrier disruption rather than disease-associated receptors.