Cody Ross Pitts

Prof. Cody Ross Pitts had his humble beginning in the Brass City - Waterbury, CT - and spent many years working intermittently as an actor. He later obtained a B.S. in Chemistry with minors in Physics and Musical Theatre from the Monmouth University Honors School in New Jersey, where he was inspired by Prof. Massimiliano Lamberto to pursue a career in organic chemistry.

In 2012, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Tom Lectka at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. His graduate research was primarily centered on developing mild “radical fluorination” reactions and studying their mechanisms in excruciating detail. Additionally, he sought opportunities to gain more experience in the realm of physical organic chemistry, e.g., by obtaining direct, spectroscopic evidence of the elusive fluoronium ion.

After completing his Ph.D. work in 2017, Cody moved his life to Switzerland to conduct research in the laboratory of Prof. Antonio Togni at ETH Zürich as an ETH Postdoctoral Fellow. There, he developed user-friendly oxidative fluorination reactions, originally with the aim of making the SF₅ group more accessible; this work ultimately led to an unanticipated, prolific 2-year stint of exploratory inorganic fluorine chemistry.

In 2019, he then transplanted to sunny San Diego, CA, to pursue research in natural product synthesis in the laboratory of Prof. Phil S. Baran at the Scripps Research Institute as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow. And, in the middle of a global pandemic, he was thrilled to have landed a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis. His independent career commenced during the summer of 2021.