Cynthia Nau Cornelissen is the director of the Center for Translational Immunology at Georgia State University. Dr. Cornelissen obtained her Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. P. Frederick Sparling as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Subsequently, she joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1997 where she ultimately attained the rank of full professor in 2007. In 2019, she joined the Institute for Biomedical Sciences (IBMS) at Georgia State University. She became the Associate Director of IBMS in 2020. Her major research interests are in bacterial pathogenesis and vaccine development against the sexually-transmitted pathogen, Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Notable achievements include identification of key virulence factors that contribute to the pathogenesis of N. gonorrhoeae. Many of these virulence factors are metal transporters that enable the pathogen to overcome host-imposed nutritional immunity. Her laboratory has been continuously funded since 1996. She served on the Committee for Graduate and Postdoctoral Education for the American Society for Microbiology for 15 years, six of which she served as the committee chair. She has been on the editorial board for Infection and Immunity since 1998. She is currently a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology. She is the recipient of several awards for teaching both medical and graduate students. She has trained over 25 PHD and MD-PHD students in addition to numerous masters’, undergraduate and high school students.