/prod01/ycp-cdnpxl-media/media/york-website/style-assets-2016/images/FallCampus4000X2250-(2).jpg)
Pain Relief
/prod01/ycp-cdnpxl-media/media/york-website/offices-and-departments/office-of-communications/magazine-photos/archive/vol-1/BEN-NKAPBELA-and-DR.-Gray.jpg)
Not all students follow the ‘normal’ path to college. For York College senior Ben Nkapbela (Ellicott City, MD), he came to York by chance after taking a long drive one day. The end of the road led him to York College where he found the exact school he was looking for. Nkapbela had attended college previously in Baltimore, Maryland, where he began the groundwork for his pharmaceutical business, Fiction Formulations. A dean at his previous college connected him with local laboratories where he learned much about the industry and discovered an interest in studying medicinal properties. His main interest is studying the health benefits of hemp, CBD, and terpenes to relieve pain.
The ambition to study pharmacology came from his experience watching the women in his family, as well as a former girlfriend, suffer with severe menstrual and endometriosis pain. This led him to create his own business with the help of friends, including fellow YCP student, Alberto Pujol ’21 (Falls Church, VA).
Nkapbela’s business caught the eye of YCP’s J.D. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship where it was accepted for laboratory space to continue his research.
“Ben is a great example of a student entrepreneur who has taken his passion and what he has learned in the classroom and is applying it in a commercial setting. He’s operating a business comprised of students from multiple disciplines and various expertise, and he’s doing it right here, on campus, at the J.D. Brown Center,” said Oscar Winters, Associate Director of the J.D. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship.