John L. Wood earned a B.A. degree from the University of Colorado in 1985 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 under the direction of Amos B. Smith, III. In 1991, he moved to Harvard University as an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow and continued studying natural products synthesis in the laboratories of Stuart Schreiber. He joined the faculty at Yale University in 1993 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Full Professor in 1998.
n 2006, Professor Wood joined the faculty at Colorado State University as the Albert I. Meyers Professor of Chemistry and in 2013 moved to Baylor University as the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas Scholar. In 2024, Professor Wood was named a University Distinguished Professor.
The major focus of Professor Wood’s research is synthetic organic chemistry. Of primary emphasis is the design of innovative solutions to problems in natural product synthesis. In choosing targets for synthesis, Wood gives equal emphasis to structural complexity and biological activity.