His research focuses on driving cryptography to use in practice. His primary interests are authentication and searchable encryption. He has worked on a variety of problems from testing broadcast encryption while flying to scanning his iris for cryptographic key derivation. Prior to joining UConn, Ben was a research scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory from 2007-2016 working on searchable encryption. He received his PhD and MA from Boston University in computer science in 2015 and 2011 respectively. He received his B.S. in mathematics and computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY in 2006.