Benjamin Alva is a Ph.D. student at Princeton’s Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, where he is developing novel technologies to study and engineer the human genome. He is also a YC Founder and has co-founded two biotechnology ventures. Currently, he's Executive Director of Azul Biotechnologies, an organization producing live biotherapeutics that reengineer coral microbiomes to increase tolerance to heat stress and mitigate coral bleaching in the wild. He has also worked with NASA and ORNL on space and ecosystem bioengineering initiatives.