Aron AndersonFaculty

Aron Anderson is a native of Minnesota, who spent his pre-school time in St. Paul and his formative schooling years in Roseville, in the Twin Cities.  After high school, Aron attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, receiving a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1985.  During the summer before his senior year, he worked with Dr. Ed Cussler at the U of M, researching the mysteries of alternative road de-icers.  After graduation, Aron moved to Menlo Park, California and began his Ph.D. work in the Chemical Engineering Department at Stanford University.  Over the next few years, with Professor Channing Robertson, Aron studied the structures of proteins bound at the interface between biological solutions and synthetic polymer materials, working to elucidate protein behavior at surfaces.

After graduation in 1991, Aron moved back to Minnesota to work at SurModics, an Eden Prairie-based company focused on providing novel surface chemistry products and technologies to medical device, pharmaceutical, and life science companies.  During his (nearly) 20 years at SurModics, Aron worked at the bench, wrote proposals for and managed Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), managed research teams, developed intellectual property, guided customer and internally-funded research and development projects, and even did some sales and marketing work.  Aron is a named inventor on 23 United States patents.

In 2010, Aron returned to the academic world and began teaching chemistry courses at Minnesota-based colleges and universities.  After brief stints at St. Cloud State University, the University of Minnesota, and Northwestern College, he started work at Gustavus in the Fall of 2011.  He has taught: General Chemistry lecture and lab classes; Organic Chemistry lecture and lab courses; Physical Chemistry lecture and lab classes; Inorganic Chemistry labs; and a special topics Introduction to Materials Science class.   

Courses Taught