Dr. Christopher D. Chouinard, Assistant Professor

Dr. Chouinard was born and raised in the small town of Grafton, MA. His interests in chemistry and biology brought him south, where he attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Tar Heels!) and furthered his passion for analytical chemistry. After briefly working as a project manager for a contract research lab back in Massachusetts, Chris pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Florida. There, Chris worked under world renowned mass spectrometrist Rick Yost, and was responsible for integrating drift tube-ion mobility spectrometry (DTIMS) into the Yost lab. Chris’s interests at UF involved IM-MS studies of clinical molecules (steroids, Vitamin D metabolites) and he also received grant funding through the Partnership for Clean Competition to develop novel IM-MS methods for improved identification of anabolic androgenic steroids in athletes.

After graduating from UF, Chris traveled to the opposite corner of the country to engage in a prestigious post-doctoral position at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA. While working with Dick Smith, another world leader in mass spectrometry, Chris designed and developed a Structures for Lossless Ion Manipulations (SLIM) platform that enabled the first integration of LC into the SLIM IM-MS pipeline for improved analysis in phosphoproteomics.

Chris joined the faculty at Clemson in the summer of 2022 and will continue his work in ion mobility-mass spectrometry. Current projects involve improved methods for metabolomics and lipidomics with gas-phase chemistry.