John Termini received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1980. He remained in New York and obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Organic Chemistry from Columbia University in 1981 and 1986, respectively, under the direction of Professor Koji Nakanishi. He then joined the laboratory of Professor Peter B. Dervan in the Chemistry department at Caltech in Pasadena as a Fellow of the American Cancer Society.
Dr. Termini came to the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope in 1989 in order to apply his training in Organic and Nucleic Acids Chemistry to challenging problems in molecular mechanisms of mutagenesis.