Benjamin Callahan

Bio

Dr. Benjamin Callahan joined NC State in January 2017 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Microbiomes and Complex Microbial Communities. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health and Pathobiology and a member of the Bioinformatics Research Center, Dr. Callahan’s research focuses on “microbiomes” — the complex microbial communities which inhabit and interact with almost every part of the world around us. He develops new statistical and bioinformatic methods to better characterize microbial communities from high-throughput biological data, and uses those methods to study important problems, such as the relationship between the maternal microbiome and preterm birth.

Dr. Callahan received a B.S. in Physics and Math from Iowa State University, and began to work on problems in quantitative biology while obtaining a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After graduation, Dr. Callahan worked as a postdoc in the Applied Physics and Statistics departments at Stanford University, where he studied adaptation in large populations through modeling, comparative genomics and experimental evolution.

CERTIFICATIONS
CFEP- Assistant Professor, Microbiomes and Complex Microbial Communities

Area(s) of Expertise

COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND BIOINFORMATICS, GLOBAL HEALTH, INFECTIOUS DISEASES
COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY, INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Publications

• Guidelines for preventing and reporting contamination in low-biomass microbiome studies , NATURE MICROBIOLOGY (2025)
• Gardnerella diversity and ecology in pregnancy and preterm birth , MSYSTEMS (2024)
• Impact of florfenicol dosing regimen on the phenotypic and genotypic resistance of enteric bacteria in steers , SCIENTIFIC REPORTS (2024)
• Pseudo-pac site sequences used by phage P22 in generalized transduction of Salmonella , PLOS PATHOGENS (2024)
• Serovar-level identification of bacterial foodborne pathogens from full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing , mSystems (2024)
• Standards for fecal microbiota transplant: Tools and therapeutic advances , BIOLOGICALS (2024)
• The development of non-destructive sampling methods of parchment skins for genetic species identification , PLOS ONE (2024)
• A pile of pipelines: An overview of the bioinformatics software for metabarcoding data analyses , MOLECULAR ECOLOGY RESOURCES (2023)
• Evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 identification methods through surveillance of companion animals in SARS-CoV-2-positive homes in North Carolina, March to December 2020 , PEERJ (2023)
• Gallbladder microbiota in healthy dogs and dogs with mucocele formation , PLOS ONE (2023)