National DNA expert to speak at Grand Valley

The Grand Valley State University Ott Lectureship in Chemistry presents Virginia Cornish from Columbia University. Her lecture, “Beyond Genome Sequencing: Translating DNA Sequence into Protein Function,” will be of interest to those in fields relating to chemistry, biology, genetics, women in science and related fields.

This event is free and open to the public, on Tuesday, April 3 at 6 p.m. in Hager Auditorium, at the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences, 301 Michigan N.E., in Grand Rapids.

Cornish did her undergraduate studies at Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Biochemistry in 1991. She then moved to University of California at Berkeley where she was a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow and a recipient of fellowships from the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 1996, she became an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biology Department at M.I.T. and joined the Columbia faculty in 1999.

Her laboratory is using a combination of synthetic chemistry and molecular genetics to develop a cell-based assay for screening large collections of compounds simultaneously based on function.

Cornish is the recipient of a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Burroughs-Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award in the Toxological Sciences, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and a National Science Foundation Career Award.

The Arnold C. Ott Lectureship in Chemistry was created and endowed by a generous gift from Dr. Arnold C. Ott and Marion Ott. In 1943 Dr. Ott received his doctorate from Michigan State University in Chemistry/Physics/Bacteriology and is a leading chemist and entrepreneur in West Michigan. He is one of the co-founders of Grand Valley State University and served on the Grand Valley Board of trustees for 28 years.

For more information call (616) 331-3317.