Aaron Aponick was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1976 and grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  He became interested in organic chemistry at  Lebanon Valley College where he studied reactions of quinones with organometallics under the guidance of the late Carl Wigal. After obtaining a B.S. in 1998 he moved to the University of Michigan and joined  the research group of Will Pearson.  At UM, where he was an Eastman Kodak Fellow and an American Chemical Society, Division of Organic Chemistry Fellow (sponsored by the Schering-Plough Research Institute), his interests in the chemistry of imines, the synthesis of alkaloids, and catalytic enantioselective reactions developed.  In 2003, he was awarded a Ph.D. and moved to Stanford University where he worked with Barry Trost as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow. In July 2006, he became an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florida and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013 and Full Professor in 2020.