Program Overview
Mission and Objectives
The predoctoral Chemical Biology Interface (CBI) program at Cornell University is in its seventeenth year of operation. The primary goal of this program is to train graduate students with the core principles and techniques of chemistry so that they can address the most current and important problems in biology and medicine. Our goal is to develop researchers who in both academic and industrial settings can apply the tools of chemistry to surmount challenges in biological research and combat disease at the molecular level. These goals are achieved by expanding the horizons of students with chemical backgrounds so that they gain insight into the problems and methods of modern biology and by providing students with biological backgrounds with the knowledge and expertise they need to bring chemistry to bear on their research areas. We target students with interests in pharmaceuticals, natural products chemistry, rational drug design, enzymology, medicinal chemistry, applications of synthetic chemistry to cell biology, protein engineering, biotechnology and genomics science. For future research success in these areas, we engrain in our students an understanding of chemical principles, including a core knowledge of organic and physical chemistry. Students individually develop in-depth expertise in such areas as chemical synthesis, mechanistic organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, chemical kinetics, and molecular structure determination.
Participating Departments and Units
Our mentors are currently drawn from ten participating units: Biomedical Sciences, The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Biology, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Microbiology and Immunology, Molecular Biology and Genetics, Molecular Medicine, Nutritional Sciences, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, and The Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology.