Cynthia Nau Cornelissen was trained in bacterial physiology in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She subsequently became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the laboratory of P. Frederick Sparling, M.D. Dr. Cornelissen joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center where she was ultimately promoted to full Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She currently serves on the editorial board of Infection and Immunity and previously served as a chartered member of the NIH study section, BACP. She continues to serve on the ASM Committee for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education and served as Chair of this ASM Education Board committee for 6 years. Dr. Cornelissen served as a co-organizer of the 19th International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference, which was held in Asheville, NC in October 2014. She is currently a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Translational Immunology within the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA. Her research program has continuously been funded, mostly by NIAID, since 1997. Her research areas include metal acquisition strategies employed by the pathogenic Neisseriae, therapeutic intervention of metal transport, and gonococcal vaccine development. She is currently the PI on a U19 STI CRC grant from NIAID to develop a gonococcal vaccine.
