COLUMBUS, Ohio—Katrina Cornish has dedicated more than three decades to establishing a source for domestic natural rubber in the U.S.
This, along with her work inventing new technology for cultivating transgenetic plants and latex and rubber extractions, has netted her the 2024 Charles Goodyear Medal—the ACS Rubber Division's most prestigious honor.
Throughout her career, she has published over 289 articles, has been listed as inventor or co-inventor of 39 patents and has filed more than 50 invention disclosures at Ohio State University. In addition, she has netted more than $15 million in federal funding to support rubber research.
But her passion for plant biology developed much earlier, when at just 8 years old she discovered "how cool plants were."
It happened during a science class at her elementary school in Beccles, England, when her teacher brought the class outside to study nature.
As her teacher discussed the characteristics of life—such as having a metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction and energy use, among others—she pointed out to the class that plants must "do exactly the same things that are essential to life, but they have to do it standing in one spot."
When people or animals are threatened, they can flee. For plants, Cornish said, they must either immediately produce seeds before they expire, or adapt.
"I was very interested in how plants adapt to bad conditions when they can't do anything to avoid them. They have to experience it and basically survive or procreate under those conditions," Cornish told Rubber News May 1 after accepting her award during the Rubber Division's Spring Technical Meeting. "I just thought that was really cool."