His research interests include modular ITS designs, modeling social learning (e.g., memes), cognitive agents, and educational tools for the developing world. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, where he was a member of the Ackoff Collaboratory for Advancement of the Systems Approach group. Ben is currently leading work on Sharable Knowledge Objects (SKO), a service-oriented architecture for AutoTutor modules that will be used in the ONR STEM Grand Challenge. He is also involved in data mining