Dr. Jerry Honts

Marshall and Judith Flapan Professor of Biology
Professor, Cell and Molecular Biology
Office Location: 210 Science Connector Building
515-271-3927
jerry.honts@drake.edu

Jerry E. Honts earned both his Bachelor of Sciences with Honors in Zoology at the University of Iowa. After working for a year as a research assistant, he enrolled in the graduate program in Biology and received his Ph.D. in 1991. He then continued with post-doctoral studies at the University of Arizona in the Departments of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry. He joined the teaching staff at Drake in 1995, and was promoted to Professor of Biology in 2023. He has occasionally served as chair of the Department of Biology.

His area of expertise is in the structure, function, and evolution of cytoskeletal proteins in eukaryotes. He currently has 21 published papers or book chapters listed in PubMed, and has given over 40 presentations at regional, national, or international conferences in the United States and in Europe. NASA and the National Science Foundation. He was in the first class of fellows inducted into the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine FUTURE program. He is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology, the Biophysical Society, and the American Chemical Society.

Dr. Honts primarily teaches courses in cell and molecular biology, including Cell Biology (BIO 165), Molecular Biology (BIO 186), Structural Biology (BIO 188), and Bioinformatics (BIO/CS 116). He has also offered elective courses on a various topics including from cancer biology to astrobiology. He has also taught classes or short courses at Des Moines University, at Hebei Normal University in Shijiazhuang, China, and at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences in St. Kitts. Dr. Honts received the Iowa Academy of the Sciences Distinguished Iowa Science Teacher Award in 2003.