Kathryn Boor


Kathryn J. Boor is an American food scientist and academic administrator. She is a professor of food processing microbiology at Cornell University. From 2020-25, she served as the dean of Cornell University's Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education. and from 2010-20, as the Ronald P Lynch Dean of the Cornell University Cornell [University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences|College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS)].

Early life

Boor was born and raised on a family-owned dairy farm in Chemung County in upstate New York. She obtained a BS in Food Science from Cornell University New York State [College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University|CALS] in 1980, and an MS in Food Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Her MS research with Winrock International in Kenya focused on improving human nutrition among limited-resource farmers. She returned to the US and earned a PhD in Microbiology at the University of California, Davis in 1994.

Career

Boor returned to Cornell University in 1994 and became the first tenured female Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science. She established the Food Safety Laboratory and was co-lead for the Milk Quality Improvement Program. Her research focuses on identifying biological factors that affect the transmission of bacteria in food systems. A newly discovered bacterium was named Listeria booriae to honor her work on Listeria monocytogenes, a food-borne pathogen. She was appointed as the Ronald P. Lynch Dean in 2010. As of August 2025, her h-index was 87 and her work had been cited over 20,400 times.

Awards and honors