About The PI

Dr. Benjamin A. Garcia, FRSC, ACSF received his B.S. in Chemistry from UC Davis in 2000, where he was an undergraduate researcher with Prof. Carlito Lebrilla and was first introduced to the field of mass spectrometry. There he was an American Chemical Society (ACS) Scholar and was awarded the I.M. Kolthoff Enrichment award by the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry. He was also a summer undergraduate researcher at Caltech with Prof. Jack Beauchamp (1999), and a research associate at Sequenom, Inc. (2000-2001). Dr. Garcia was a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Virginia under the supervision of Prof. Donald Hunt (2005), and then was an Institute for Genomic Biology and NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois with Prof. Neil Kelleher (2005-2008). In 2008, Dr. Garcia was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Princeton University until his recruitment as the Presidential Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, and Faculty Director of the Quantitative Proteomics Resource Core at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2012.
He was promoted to full Professor in 2016, and named the John McCrea Dickson MD Presidential Professor in 2018. Ben became the Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in the summer of 2021, read about it here. He is highly passionate about encouraging and supporting younger scientists. He is currently a mentor coach for the ASBMB MOSAIC program, helped establish the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Membership, Diversity and Outreach committee, is a Founder of the Hispanics and Latinx in Mass Spectrometry group, and is a member of the ACS Committee on Minority Affairs (CMA). For all his efforts in this space, Ben was awarded the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility Mentorship Award, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Ruth Kirschstein Diversity in Science Award and was included in the Atlas of Inspiring Hispanic/Latinx Scientists.
Dr. Garcia’s research interest has focused on developing novel mass spectrometry based approaches and computation for interrogating protein modifications, especially those involved in epigenetic mechanisms. One longstanding main interest is in understanding the dynamics of histone PTMs during cellular differentiation and disease by combining cell biology, genomics and biochemical techniques with quantitative Bottom Up, Middle and Top Down proteomics. His work has resulted in over 450 publications. His Google Scholar page can be found here. He has been recognized with numerous honors including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Research Award, the ACS Leadership Development Award, named an “Emerging Investigator” by the Molecular Biosystems journal, the New Jersey Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group Early Career Award, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an Sciex Young Investigator Award, an Agilent Thought Leader Award, the Biomed Research Central Award in Molecular and Cellular Sciences, the PITTCON Achievement Award, the Enabling Proteomics Technologies Ken Standing Award, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Dr. Robert Arceci Scholar Award, the Protein Society Young Investigator Award, the Distinguished Lectureship Award from the New Jersey American Chemical Society Mass Spectrometry Group, the American Chemical Society Arthur F. Findeis Award, the prestigious American Society for Mass Spectrometry Biemann Medal, the Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Award for Outstanding Achievements in Mass Spectrometry and received the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award. He was named a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Chemical Society.
Garcia is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Proteome Research, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (MCP), and Molecular Omics journals. Ben also previously served on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Analytical Chemistry journal (2017-2019) and as an Associate Editor for BMC Genomics (2010-2017). Ben is currently an Associate Editor for both the Analytical Chemistry and Mass Spectrometry Reviews journals. Ben is the President-Elect of US HUPO, and he served on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) from 2011-2022. He has previously served on the US HUPO Nominating, ASMS Nominating, ASMS Diversity and Outreach and the ASMS Asilomar Conference committees. In 2024, Ben was been elected as Chair of the ACS Analytical Chemistry Division (ANYL), where he also served as an Alternate Councilor from 2022-2024 as well. Ben currently also serves on the HUPO Governing Council (Western Region Representative) since 2016, and served on the HUPO Executive Committee as an Member-at-Large (2020-2022). Ben also serves on the HUPO Marketing and Outreach Committee and is currently the Editor for the HUPOST newsletter. He has chaired several scientific sessions or workshops at many conferences including US and World HUPO, ACS, ASMS, ASBMB, the Protein Society and ABRF to name a few. He served on American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry long range planning committee, and previously organized the Advances in Mass Spectrometry sessions at the ACS National conference as well. Dr. Garcia previously participated in the Peptide and Protein Identification Guidelines meetings for MCP, and served as a guest co-editor for a special MCP issue focused on Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics. He has been profiled in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Scholars Alumni Profile Series, the Analytical Scientist, Faces of MS, an ASBMB Research Spotlight, Humans of HUPO and in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. He was also featured in the film, Decoding Life, The Epigenetics Revolution, and in the Real Science Real Life Podcast. Ben served as the secretary for the Delaware Valley Mass Spectrometry Discussion group from 2015-2018, and its President from 2020-2021. He has also served on many NIH, NSF and other grant review panels, and served on the Enabling Bioanalytical and Imaging Technologies (EBIT) NIH study section (2015-2020), the last two years as Chair. Ben also served on the NSF Biological Sciences Advisory committee (2017-2020). Ben has also participated at Capitol Hill Day speaking to congressional representatives about continuing federal funding of scientific research. Dr. Garcia has collaborated or consulted for Sciex, Millipore Sigma, Quantum-Si, Celgene, GSK, Genentech, Eli Lilly, Thermo, Constellation, Abbvie, BMS and Novartis.