From Family Legacy to Physician-Scientist: Ben VanDerHeyden's Path at Tulane SSE

Ben VanDerHeyden has a photograph of himself walking around Tulane's campus at 10 years old. Both of his parents are School of Science and Engineering alumni, and they were married at Rogers Memorial Chapel. The university was always part of his story. What he could not have known back then was the specific shape that story would take: four years of undergraduate research, a honors thesis on DNA replication and cancer, and now a place in Tulane's MD/PhD program, where he will train to become a physician-scientist.

When Ben arrived as a freshman, his academic direction was far from settled. He took international relations. He took ethics. He was, in his own words, "all over the place." It was general chemistry and cell biology that began to pull him toward science. "I did pretty well in both of those classes," he said. "So I thought I may have a calling towards something science related." He declared as a Biological Chemistry major and, around the same time, found his way into research.

That happened through a freshman year honors program dinner where students sat with faculty from different departments. Ben spotted a School of Medicine representative and introduced himself. The faculty member happened to be the person who would become his first principal investigator. "I had dinner with him, and I asked him about getting involved in research, and he told me to email him," Ben recalled. The PI wrote back to say there was an open spot in his lab. Ben took it.

He spent two and a half years in that lab, housed in the Department of Medicine's pulmonary section, learning foundational techniques. "I went into lab not even knowing how to pipette anything," he said. That experience gave him the base to move into his current position in a DNA replication lab in the Department of Chemical and Molecular Biology, where he is completing his honors thesis under Dr. Zac Purcell.

The research focuses on what happens when mutations reduce the accuracy of DNA polymerase, the enzyme responsible for copying genetic material when cells divide. When that accuracy drops, mutations accumulate, and those mutations can lead to what Ben describes as "ultra mutated" cancer phenotypes, tumors packed with an unusually high number of genetic errors. The lab's work is exploratory, comparing how different polymerases contribute to or suppress those mutations, and asking whether eliminating the function of certain polymerases might trigger the kind of cell cycle arrest that would stop mutated cells from continuing to replicate.

Ben credits both SSE and the School of Medicine for shaping him as a researcher. Within SSE, he found faculty who were willing to invest time in students individually. "I was very easily able to have professors who were willing to invest in me as a student and willing to mentor me," he said. At the medical school, the model was different: how much a student got out of the experience depended largely on how much they put in. His first PI told him exactly that, and Ben responded by committing around 20 hours a week to the lab and staying on campus every summer since freshman year.

Two faculty members within SSE stand out to him. Dr. Cortez in the Department of Chemistry and Dr. Meadows in Cell and Molecular Biology have both been significant figures in his development. A graduate-level course Ben took with Dr. Meadows, focused on animal models in biomedical research, was particularly formative. "That's the one class that really confirmed to me that I want to go into research," he said. Dr. Meadows also serves as his independent study advisor and the director of his thesis.

He has arrived at a commitment to the MD/PhD program at Tulane, where he will pursue a PhD in Biomedical Sciences alongside his medical degree. He also holds a minor in public health, which he plans to integrate into his work. His long-term interest is in oncology, specifically in using genomic approaches to make cancer more treatable. He sees precision medicine, including genome editing, as the direction healthcare is heading, and believes a research doctorate will be increasingly important for physicians working in that space. "I feel like with [precision medicine] being the future of healthcare, being able to approach it with this degree will allow me to be more innovative," he said, describing the possibility of developing techniques that could make cancers more responsive to treatments like radiation therapy.

Growing up in the Gulf South and staying for his graduate education, he sees the region as one with distinctive problems that need people willing to stay and address them. Cancer Alley, the stretch along the Mississippi River heavily affected by chemical plant pollution, is one example he raises as directly relevant to his own interest in oncology. "There are so many unique problems in the city," he said. "I wish that more people would feel compelled to not just get their Tulane degree and get out of the South, but get their Tulane degree and want to do something about fixing the community that they've lived in for a few years."