Jordan Beaver is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry Graduate Group at UC Davis. Growing up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Jordan developed a love for the outdoors, including camping, hiking, rock climbing, and canoeing, as well as a deep appreciation for Southern BBQ. During his senior year as an undergrad at Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC, Jordan was able to do an independent study on “The Expansion of the Craft Beer Industry in the Southeast U.S.” It was during this time that he developed a love for fermentation science and felt that UC Davis would be a perfect fit for graduate school.
After graduating with a B.S. in Chemistry, Jordan joined the lab of Anita Oberholster in 2015 and began his research of elucidating adsorption interactions between red wine polyphenols and grape cell wall material. Working in collaboration with the Block lab, this project was funded by E&J Gallo Winery with the intent of developing a computation model 
for phenolic extraction in red wine fermentations. This work became the basis of Jordan’s Ph.D. thesis which was submitted in July of 2019.
During his first summer in Davis, Jordan’s research schedule allowed him the opportunity to work as an assistant brewer at Three Mile Brewing Company on the weekends. Though initially intended to be a temporary summer job, Jordan loved the work so much that he held the position through most of graduate school. This part-time work stoked his interest in the scientific processes behind malting and brewing, leading to him take all of UC Davis’ brewing courses under the guidance of Dr. Charlie Bamforth. After completion of these courses, Jordan worked as a teaching assistant for Dr. Bamforth and eventually had the opportunity to act as an assistant instructor for the popular course “Introduction to Beer and Brewing” upon Charlie’s retirement in 2018.
The combination of practical experience, academic research, and teaching opportunities led Jordan to apply for a faculty position at the University of Texas at Tyler in the newly created Fermentation Science group in their Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses in Beer Brewing, Winemaking, and Distillation, Jordan will also be conducting his own academic research at UT Tyler. He is interested in the application of biodiversity practices to East Texas viticulture, the effect of antifoaming products on hop utilization during beer brewing, and the elucidation of polymeric pigment formation kinetics in red wine. Jordan starts this position in the Fall of 2019.