Christopher Easley's Biography

Christopher Easley, C. Harry Knowles Professor, Auburn University

Christopher J. Easley is currently the C. Harry Knowles Professor and Graduate Program Officer (GPO) of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Auburn University. He received his B.S. degree in chemistry at Mississippi State University in 2002 and his Ph.D. in bioanalytical chemistry from the University of Virginia in 2006, under training from Prof. James P. Landers. His postdoctoral training was provided by Prof. David W. Piston at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, from 2006-2008. He began his independent career at Auburn in 2008 and was promoted to full professor in 2018. He teaches chemistry from the fundamental undergraduate level up to the special topics graduate level in bioanalytical techniques. Prof. Easley is currently an Associate Editor at Analytical Methods (2017-present, Royal Society of Chemistry) and a board member of the Boshell Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases Research Program at Auburn University. He is also a Scientific Advisor for Innamed, Inc. and holds several U.S. patents based on biosensing and microfluidics. Recently, he was awarded the 2019 Mid-Career Achievement Award by the AES Electrophoresis Society and the 2020 COSAM Dean’s Research Award at Auburn. In work funded mostly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), his bioanalytical research laboratory develops droplet-based microfluidic methods to study dynamic function of small numbers of cells in intact, primary tissue from mouse models of disease. To accommodate bioanalysis at the microscale, the team also develops DNA-driven assays for highly sensitive protein quantification in nanoliter volumes using both fluorescence and electrochemistry, work funded by both the NIH and National Science Foundation (NSF). The Easley laboratory has focused their customized analytical tools on real-world applications in clinical biosensing as well as on fundamental understanding of dynamic function of adipose and pancreatic endocrine tissues, which are of paramount importance in diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.