Biography

Dr. Ryan T. Hayes, Professor of Chemistry, has been teaching chemistry at Andrews University since 2009 and has a passion for making chemistry understandable for people of all ages especially for his university level classes.  In addition to academics, Dr. Hayes has a research program that studies properties of dendrimers, develops new applications for dendrimers, and analyzes various elements in hair, food, and water.  He also helps manage Andrews ChemServices, a company within Andrews University, which manufactures and sells dendrimers to researchers around the world.  He has a passion for helping the general public to see and appreciate God’s chemical design of Earth.  He often travels to churches, schools, camps, and other programs to teach basic principles of chemistry or to encourage STEM education through exciting chemical demonstrations and presentations. 

Dr. Hayes has spent nearly a decade working in industry. His experience includes business development, patent portfolio management, and scale-up of chemical-based technologies within the life science reagent, personal care, agricultural, coatings, and polymer additive industries. Dr. Hayes was Director of Business Development for 4.5 years with Dendritic Nanotechnologies (DNT) located in Mt. Pleasant, MI before accepting the teaching responsibilities at Andrews University. Before DNT, he was employed as a research scientist at Lynntech, Inc. in College Station, TX where he assisted with numerous projects to develop and commercialize new chemical sensing technologies. Ryan is married to a microbiologist named Suzi, and they have three children: Carter, Christiana, and Cadance.

Dr. Hayes teaches General Chemistry (CHEM131, lecture & Lab) in the Fall along with General Chemistry II (CHEM132, lecture & lab) and Instrumental Analysis (CHEM430) in the Spring.

Information for CHEM131/CHEM132 students

Hayes Advisees Webpage

Hayes Research Web Page

Current Research or Professional Activities

Dr. Hayes' research activities include the synthesis and analysis of dendrimers which are highly functional polymers with many new properties for medicine, materials, and modern technology.  These modern marvels of nanometer dimensions may change the way treatment and diagnostic molecules are administered to improve safety and efficacy. He has involved many undergraduates in his research since 2009 thanks to the Andrews University Undergraduate Research Scholarship program.  Dr. Hayes also helps to manage Andrews ChemServices (www.andrewschemservices.com) which manufactures and sells PAMAM Starburst Dendrimers to research scientists around the world.  

Dr. Hayes' research group also looks at finding potentially carcinogenic molecules formed in the burning of plant-based amino acids.  There is a class of carcinogenic molecules that form from the burning of creatine and other amino acids called Heterocyclic Amines (HCA).  These creatine-based HCA's are well known and characterized from the burning of fish and meat.   Arginine, commonly found in plant-based proteins such as soy, has a similar chemical structure to creatine and previous research has demonstrated that it might also be responsible for forming mutagenic HCAs.  No one has identified the chemical structures of an arginine-based HCAs at this point so the Hayes group is using prep-HPLC, NMR, Mass Spectroscopy, and the AMES test to seek out and identify these potentially new class of carcinogens. 

Dr. Hayes is also using absorption and emission spectroscopies to characterize and analyze a variety of chemicals and chemical processes.  These include the analysis of heavy metals in hair, food, and water.   His research group utlilizes the following equipment in his research: Perkin Elmer 8000 ICP-OES,  Cary Eclipse, and Cary-5000 along with an Agilent 1260 HPLC for analyzing a wide variety of materials.