The group

Chris Jeffrey is Professor of Chemistry and of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he holds the Harold Walter Siebens Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Lake Tahoe campus. He directs the Hitchcock Center for Chemical Ecology, which he co-founded in 2017, and leads the Tahoe Discovery Lab.

He earned a B.S. in chemistry from Carroll University, then an M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota with Professor Thomas R. Hoye, where his thesis included the total synthesis of petromyzonamine disulfate, a component of the sea lamprey migratory pheromone. He was a Council on Science and Technology Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University before joining the UNR faculty in 2010.

His group works where organic chemistry meets ecology, from new reactive intermediates for synthesis to the chemistry of plant–insect interactions and the pigments that let microbes survive extreme UV. The work is supported by NSF, NASA and NIH, and has long-standing partnerships in Brazil, Costa Rica and Ecuador. He has taught short courses in chemical ecology at the University of São Paulo and UNESP, and has led Earthwatch citizen science teams since 2012.

He serves as Treasurer of the International Society of Chemical Ecology, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Natural Products, an editorial board member of Discover Ecology, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Stratum Biosciences. His honors include the Mousel-Feltner Award for Excellence in Research, UNR’s Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentorship Award, the Thieme Synthesis/Synlett Award, and a CNPq Science Without Borders award.