Christopher Chouinard

Christopher Chouinard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Clemson University. He received B.S. degrees in chemistry and biology from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where he synthesized and characterized biotherapeutic and antimicrobial nanoparticles for sensor applications under the supervision of Mark Schoenfisch. He received his Ph.D. working under Rick Yost at University of Florida. During his graduate studies, he responsible for integrating drift tube-ion mobility spectrometry (DTIMS) into the Yost lab. Chris’s interests at UF involved IM-MS studies of clinical molecules (steroids, Vitamin D metabolites) and improved identification of anabolic androgenic steroids in athletes. After graduating from UF, Chris held a prestigious post-doctoral position at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, WA. While working with Dick Smith, Chris designed and developed a Structures for Lossless Ion Manipulations (SLIM) platform that enabled the first integration of LC into the SLIM IM-MS pipeline for improved analysis in phosphoproteomics. After four years at Florida Tech, Chris joined the faculty at Clemson in 2022. Projects in his group broadly involve IM-MS instrument and method development, with applications illicit drug analysis, anti-doping, biological -omics, and environmental analysis. In 2026, he was the recipient of an NSF Early Career (CAREER) award to fund his fundamental studies of gas-phase structure of illicit drugs over the next five years. He was recently named a Rising Star by the International Society for Ion Mobility Spectrometry (ISIMS), an Emerging Investigator by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a Rising Star in Measurement Science by the American Chemical Society. He currently holds joint affiliations in the Eukaryotic Pathogens Innovation Center (EPIC), Clemson University School of Health Research (CUSHR), and the Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute.