Jeffrey Varner

Professor of Chemical Engineering

Jeffrey D. Varner received degrees from Purdue including a B.S. in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1997 from the School of Chemical Engineering. 

Following a postdoctoral appointment at ETH-Zurich, Dr. Varner spent five years as a research scientist at Dupont Industrial Biosciences, and then joined Cornell University as an Assistant Professor in 2005. He became a tenured Associate Professor in 2011. Professor Varner’s recognitions include an NSF CAREER award, a Cornell College of Engineering Teaching Excellence award, NAE Frontiers of Engineering invitee, and two college-level undergraduate research mentorship awards.  

Dr. Varner’s research focuses on technologies for the analysis and design of metabolic and signaling pathways in simple and complex cells. He combines molecular biology and mathematical modeling to optimize existing metabolic pathways and to develop new pathways for the production of industrially important small molecules and protein products. Professor Varner is interested in complex signaling networks, which operate inside human cells, and he is interested in the biochemistry of blood, particularly in blood coagulation to complement the initial line of defense against hemorrhage and infection, as well.