Benjamin Carpenter was born and raised in Lebanon, PA, a short drive from both the chocolate fountains of Hershey and the Amish farms of Lancaster. He stayed close to home for college, choosing to attend Lebanon Valley College (along with his high school sweetheart, now wife, in what will someday be known as the greatest love story ever told). While there, he designed organometallic receptors to sequester environmental contaminants in water under Dr. Marc Harris. After a lifetime spent in the Valley, he packed up and traveled to a land of less chocolaty pastures to pursue a PhD. in chemistry at UNC Chapel Hill. In the Waters Lab, Ben develops model systems that allow us to study the dynamic interplay between covalent and noncovalent interactions utilizing disulfide exchange and coiled-coiled peptides, respectively. Outside of lab, Ben can be found spending time with his lovely wife and their three cats, constantly checking the world tennis rankings on Wikipedia (and actually playing with his bestie Katherine), developing the Routfit (patent pending), dancing to Lizzo and his other queens, moonlighting as a Cary resident, and championing earbuds as a fashion accessory.