Jeffrey Varner holds a Bachelor of Science degree (Chemistry), a Masters and a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering, from Purdue University. Prof. Varner's graduate thesis work at Purdue was done under the direction of Prof. D. Ramkrishna in the area of modeling and analysis of metabolic networks. Following Purdue, Prof. Varner was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at the ETH-Zurich where he studied signal transduction mechanisms involved in cell-death under Prof. Jay Bailey. After the ETH, Prof. Varner was a Scientist in the Oncology business unit of Genencor International Inc, Palo Alto, CA. While at Genencor, Prof. Varner was involved in the discovery of novel targets in human cancers, and was a project team member for preclinical, phase-I and II studies of protein therapeutics for the treatment of colorectal cancer and Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). Prof. Varner left Genencor at the end of 2005 to join the faculty of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at Cornell University. At Cornell, the Varner lab is developing physiochemical modeling tools to rationally reprogram human signal transduction architectures.
The objective of our research program at Cornell is the development of physiochemical modeling tools that can be used to rationally reprogram signal flow in human signal transduction networks. Our thesis is that physiochemical models could be hypotheses generation engines, which suggest targeted reprogramming strategies, despite model uncertainty.
Varner's teaching objectives have been; (i) to better integrate biochemistry into the core Chemical and Biomolecular curriculum and; (ii) to be an undergraduate research mentor.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) reviewer, National Science Foundation (NSF) reviewer, Undergraduate research advisor, Undergraduate faculty advisor
