Jon was born and raised near Los Angeles and received his B.S. degree at MIT and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and subsequently joined the faculty at the same institution. Prior to coming to Yale University, he was Professor in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and jointly held a faculty position in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UC San Francisco. He has published more than 290 research articles on the application of chemistry to biomedical research.