Ethan Van Arnam

Ethan Van Arnam is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Claremont McKenna College, Pitzer College, and Scripps College, part of the Keck Science Department. He leads the Van Arnam Lab, focusing on antibiotics, natural products chemistry, and chemical ecology. His research involves isolating bioactive compounds from insects and their symbiotic bacteria, with fieldwork in Arizona and New Mexico.

Academic History: A.B. from Bowdoin College, Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology. He received tenure in 2024 and a Research Starter Grant from the American Society of Pharmacognosy (2018). His lab has secured an NIH R15 grant (2024) for antibiotic discovery.

Key research interests include microbial defense mechanisms, environmental antibiotic discovery, and the ecological roles of natural products. The lab emphasizes undergraduate research, with many students presenting at national meetings and winning awards like the Goldwater Scholarship.

Lab activities include annual fieldwork for ant collecting and bacterial isolation, hosting over 30 undergraduate researchers since 2018. Notable publications include studies on ECO-0501, nocamycin, and thiopeptide defense mechanisms.