After graduating from Central School, Jeffrey Powell attended Notre Dame University and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.S. in Biology. He continued his education at Rockefeller University and the University of California in Davis where he earned a Ph.D. in Genetics. He became an assistant, then a full professor of biology at Yale University. Powell has been on numerous field expeditions in the Western Hemisphere and America to study fruit flies and yellow fever mosquitos.