Benjamin completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Ghana and his MSc at The Sainsbury Laboratory in the UK between 2021 and 2024, before commencing his PhD in 2025. He is interested in discovering how plant pathogens use small proteins to colonize important plants, kill them in the process, and how these proteins have evolved over time and across geography. Due to this interest, his project involves the study of effector proteins in the Zymoseptoria pathosystem and aims to discover how mutations contribute to sequence variations, structural diversity via protein structure modelling and link those to virulence. Beyond research, he likes to try new foods even though he does not enjoy cooking, enjoys playing and watching football, and visiting places to learn about new cultures and appreciate cultural diversity.
Evolutionary genomics of pathogens
Croll lab at University of Neuchatel