Jón was born and raised in the small town of Akranes, Iceland. After graduation, Jón moved to Reykjavik to start his studies at the University of Iceland, where he became fascinated by the wonders of Organic Chemistry, which has continued ever since. As an undergraduate, Jón worked in the laboratory of Professor Jón K. F. Geirsson on the synthesis of antifungal agents. Jón then followed in the footsteps of his Icelandic ancestors and moved west, to America. This journey brought him to New Haven Connecticut, where he chose to pursue a graduate career in Organic Chemistry at Yale University. While at Yale, he joined the research group of a newly hired assistant professor, John L. Wood, where he worked on the total synthesis of the natural products CP-225,917 and CP-263,114 as well as new dearomatization methodology. At the end of his graduate studies, Jón was presented with the irresistible offer of moving to New York City to work in the laboratory of Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). While in the Danishefsky group, as a General Motors Cancer Research Scholar, he worked on the total syntheses of the natural products epothilone 490 and migrastatin, as well as their drug discovery advancement. Jón moved to Ithaca in 2004 to start his independent career at Cornell University, where he launched a research program focused on natural products and the development of new reactions. In 2010, Jón and his group loaded the wagons, journeyed across the continent, and settled in Tucson where he is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Arizona. Jón’s group works on diverse organic synthesis topics such as new reaction development, total syntheses, drug discovery, novel material chemistry and most recently machine learning. Jón is the creator of the popular Top 200 Drug poster series, first launched in 2006, and the widely used app/website Chemistry By Design (CByD) he created in 2011 with new content added weekly.