Marie Harton is a PhD student in chemistry at Columbia University. In the Cornish Laboratory, she is focused on using synthetic biology to develop technology in yeast for the discovery of new cellulases through biodiversity mining. Specifically, she has worked to improve the dynamic range of chemical complementation, a technology based on the yeast three-hybrid (Y3H) assay and previously developed in the Cornish laboratory. Recently, she published a manuscript describing her modified Y3H technology, which has a dramatically enhanced dynamic range in mock selections compared to the original Y3H technology. Currently, she is working to apply the improved second-generation Y3H technology to the discovery of new cellulases from real metagenomic libraries.

Marie is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Fellowship. She also received the Miller Teaching Award in 2013 from the Columbia Chemistry Department for her excellence in teaching.