Virginia Cornish is the Helena Rubinstein Professor in the Department of Chemistry. Her laboratory brings together modern methods in organic chemistry and DNA technology to expand the synthetic capabilities of living cells. Their interests include harnessing the ribosome for unnatural oligomer synthesis using synthetic amino acid building blocks, and engineering yeast to enable directed evolution of molecules and pathways directly in a living cell. They then exploit these synthetic methods for applications in bioimaging, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

Dr. Cornish is the author of more than 60 publications and patents and her research is supported by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and private foundations. Her research has been recognized with numerous awards including an NSF Career Award, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Protein Society Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award, and the American Chemical Society Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry.