Ben Black is the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics at University of Pennsylvania. He is the Member of Abramson Cancer Center and ITMAT, as well as Executive Board Member of Epigenetics Program.

Following undergraduate studies at Carleton College, Ben Black did a Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Virginia on pathways for nuclear protein export in the lab of Bryce Paschal. After a four-year postdoctoral fellowship with Don Cleveland at UCSD in the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Ben started his own group at UPenn to continue the work he had started in the area of chromosome biology. The work in the Black Lab in this area is focused on understanding the physical nature of the epigenetic information generated by the incorporation of the histone H3 variant, CENP-A into chromatin.

Ben has also taught in or co-directed more than a dozen different courses in the Biomedical Graduate Studies (BGS) programs, School of Arts & Sciences, and Medical School. He has served on NIH review panels and as a reviewer for many national and international funding agencies. He is an Associate Editor of Science Advances and the Biochemical Journal, on the editorial board of Molecular & Cellular Biology and Cells, and serves as a reviewer for >25 scientific journals, including Nature, Science, and PNAS.