Benji Lamp

My Research

My research lives in the computational/systems biology sphere of the lab. My work involves building genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) of zebrafish. This modeling framework allows us to take metabolomic and transcriptomic datasets to generate condition-specific models, which let us analyze the metabolic potential of zebrafish exposed to various nasty chemicals.

A major goal of this work is advancing New Approach Methodologies (NAMs). NAMs are modern, mechanistically driven alternatives to traditional animal testing that use computational, in vitro, and other non-animal methods to characterize chemical hazards. In-silico approaches like GEM-based modeling allows us to generate testable, mechanistic hypotheses about toxicological outcomes at a systems level without requiring additional animal experiments.

My work is done in collaboration with Hagler Institute Fellow Dr. Robyn Tanguay at Oregon State University. The Tanguay Lab is a powerhouse in Environmental and Molecular Toxicology, and has provided us with high-quality omic datasets that help build our models.

Education & Background

Before starting my PhD, I completed a B.S. in Biomedical Sciences with minors in Bioinformatics and Biomedical Research from Texas A&M University, College Station. My undergraduate research was involved with more traditional bioinformatics. At the TAMU Vet Med department, I built end-to-end RNA-seq and miRNA-seq pipelines for longitudinal differential expression analysis of bovine mammary gland development in the lab of Dr. Monique Rijnkels. I also got some experience with microbial bioinformatics studying the female urinary microbiome at Oregon Health & Science University in the lab of Dr. Lisa Karstens, where I benchmarked taxonomic reference databases for 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing pipelines. I am not a traditional wet-lab scientist, but I encourage anyone who is interested in biology and loves puzzles to watch a couple of online tutorials and give computational biology a try.

Outside the Lab

I live in the Galveston area with my one-year-old yellow lab puppy, Peter. I advise any prospective grad students to not get a puppy during your first semester, haha. Since doing my undergrad at TAMU, I have become a massive Aggie sports fan. The Volleyball national championship was the highlight of 2025, but Marcel getting us to 11-1 in the regular season is a close second. I have been indoctrinated into the Aggie Football cult, but I grew up in Dallas and remain a diehard Cowboys, Rangers, Stars, and Mavs fan.

Long-term, I am hoping to find work at the intersection of computational biology and toxicology, whether in industry, government research, or beyond.