Bio
Benjamin McMaster is a DPhil candidate in Medical Sciences at the University of Oxford. Supervised by Dr Hashem Koohy and Dr Charlotte Dean, he is part of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and the Department of Statistics where he studies computational approaches to systems immunology. Before starting his DPhil, Benjamin completed an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Canada. At this time, he completed several work placements in academic and biotechnology companies that inspired him to pursue a doctoral degree understanding the immune mechanism underpinning health and disease.
Research interests
Benjamin’s research interests revolve around mapping human immune responses to pathogens from a multitude of disease contexts. In particular, he focuses on predicting the targets of T cells, one of the key immune cells in the human body responsible for identifying and eliminating foreign invaders. He aims to apply newly develop deep learning models in protein structure prediction and protein-protein interaction prediction to T cell receptor data to better understand the rules that govern antigen-specific T cell response. By doing so, he hopes to create a map between the immune cells of our body and foreign pathogens, developing tools for future pandemic prevention and the design of new T cell-based therapeutics and vaccines.