| Kathryn Boor | |
| Birth Place: | New York |
| Education: | Cornell University (BS) University of Wisconsin-Madison (MS) University of California, Davis (PhD) |
| Discipline: | Food Science |
Kathryn J Boor is an American food scientist and academic administrator. She is the dean of Cornell University Graduate School and vice provost for graduate education.[1] Previously she served as the Ronald P Lynch Dean of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.[2]
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 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.[3]
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. 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.[4] She was appointed as the Ronald P. Lynch Dean in 2010.[5] As of 2023, her h-index was 82 and her work had been cited over 18,000 times.[6]