Virginia W. Cornish graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University with
a B.A. in Biochemistry in 1991, where she did undergraduate research with Professor
Ronald Breslow. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry with Professor Peter Schultz at the
University of California at Berkeley and then was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biology
Department at M.I.T. under the guidance of Professor Robert Sauer. Virginia joined the
faculty of the Chemistry Department at Columbia in 1999, where she carries out research
at the interface of chemistry and biology, and was promoted to Associate Professor
with tenure in 2004 and then Professor in 2007. Her laboratory brings together modern
methods in synthetic chemistry and DNA technology to expand the synthetic capabilities
of living cells. Her research has resulted in 59 research publications and several patents
and currently is supported by multiple grants from the NIH and NSF. Virginia has been
recognized for her research by awards including an NSF Career Award (2000), a Sloan
Foundation Fellowship (2003), the Protein Society Irving Sigal Young Investigator
Award (2009), and the American Chemical Society Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry
(2009). In addition to her research and teaching, Virginia enjoys spending time with her
husband and their three children.