He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Stanford University. He completed M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the California Institute of Technology. His thesis research in the laboratory of Professor David Tirrell employed noncanonical amino acids in applications of protein engineering and biophysics. To complete his training, Van Deventer pursued postdoctoral training in the laboratory of K. Dane Wittrup in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. His work there included engineering antibodies capable of targeting cancer-associated fibroblasts and enhancing yeast display with noncanonical amino acids. He is currently interested in using biomolecular engineering, synthetic biology, and chemical biology to establish new strategies for treating cancer and other complex diseases.