Ana Cornell

She spoke her first English words at the age of five, and she has described herself as a “very bossy young child” with high ambitions. She has also said, “I’ve always liked being in charge of a team.”⁠[1][2]

When she was 16, her father had a health problem, which later led her to start Acorn Genetics. She has said that she was not able to get tested herself: a result would stay on her record forever, and she was concerned about high costs and insurance rates; she recalled that at 18 a doctor informed her that a genetic test would cost over $7,000, since insurance does not cover DNA screening. She also held that direct-to-consumer testing companies, with costly sequencers to pay for, sold user information to make a profit, and in the end she skipped testing.⁠[3][2][1]

She said that in high school she had her last two months off and used them to build a genetics app.⁠[2]

She studied biomedical engineering as an undergraduate at the McCormick School of Engineering of Northwestern University, in the class of 2022. She took Design Thinking and Communication as a first-year student and says it gave her the confidence and skills to try this; she enrolled in McCormick’s entrepreneurship minor. She was interested in genetics but had never taken a DNA test.⁠[4][5][6][1]

The idea for Acorn Genetics grew out of a sketch she drew while bored in an Engineering Analysis II class at Northwestern; in her Q&A with VentureWell she likewise recalled sketching a design for a new, affordable, fully automated sequencer after starting her undergraduate studies at Northwestern. In fall 2019 she took ENTREP 225, “Principles of Entrepreneurship,” taught by Michael Marasco, clinical professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, and first pitched the project there; Acorn Genetics was formed in that course. The company’s profile on The Garage’s job board gives 2019 as its founding year.⁠[1][3][4][7][8]

She then learned of the Propel Program at The Garage at Northwestern, the university’s student entrepreneurship incubator, which supports female student entrepreneurs, and was accepted before the start of winter quarter, receiving a Propel Program grant.⁠[4][7]

On July 17, 2020, Northwestern Engineering described GenomeLock, the project she led as a rising junior: a three-part home test kit that uses a cheek swab, with the sample passing through a DNA extractor, a PCR thermal cycler that amplifies the DNA segment being analyzed, and a handheld genetic sequencer, and with results read on a computer, so that the DNA never leaves the user’s home. The example given is testing the apolipoprotein E gene for Alzheimer’s risk, with a binary positive-or-negative result similar to a pregnancy test. She said, “I couldn’t find a test that could be taken and analyzed from home”; another Northwestern project page quotes her: “I was always concerned about privacy risks with current products on the market.”⁠[4][5]

The team included Jakub Wolsza, a rising sophomore in electrical engineering, and Mark Ogarek, a rising sophomore in biomedical engineering: Wolsza built the PCR machine in the Ford Mechatronics Lab at a fraction of the cost of current models, and Ogarek refined the DNA extraction process using his lab experience. Judy Lubin, executive coach-in-residence at The Garage, and Hayes Ferguson, former associate director of The Garage and then director of the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, advised her on launching a business, and an assistant professor of molecular biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences provided lab space for iterating on the prototype and validating the science.⁠[4][5]

In spring quarter 2020 the team split up the hardware and worked remotely; she said, “Working remotely is really difficult when building a physical product,” so the team planned to meet that summer in her family’s garage in Glenview, IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry, to run comprehensive tests and finalize the prototype. Her plans then were to apply for a patent, launch a company website, and to network with potential investors and manufacturing partners for large-scale production.⁠[4][5]

Northwestern Magazine called her a junior in McCormick and described Acorn Genetics as a company formed in the Principles of Entrepreneurship course taught by Michael Marasco, with core members including, besides her and the sophomores Wolsza and Ogarek, the junior Kate Conner; GenomeLock was its first product, the company sold enzymes with which users could test for certain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and results showed any abnormalities found, disease risk and recommended actions. She said, “We’re finding out that people have genetic predispositions to certain diseases.”⁠[7]

On September 25, 2020, the McCormick School of Engineering and the Farley Center profiled the Northwestern students on Chicago Inno’s 2020 “25 Under 25” list; she was among them, as a McCormick student of the class of 2022 with Acorn Genetics, and the profile described GenomeLock and her plans to apply for a patent, launch a website and network with potential investors and manufacturing partners.⁠[6][9][7]

She has said that the COVID-19 pandemic was her biggest challenge: it forced the team out of the labs, halted production and separated team members. In January 2021, when renewed surges shut things down again, the team lost the progress it had just made in getting into a lab and she considered closing the company to finish school; she said Acorn nearly failed during at least two months. Her advice to other founders is to wait three months before quitting and then reassess: “Wait it out.” She has also said that during the pandemic Acorn was her escape from its difficulties.⁠[2][1]

On July 23, 2021, The Garage profiled Acorn Genetics as a member of Jumpstart 2021, its pre-accelerator program. She said, “Acorn does sequencing - not genotyping”: sequencing reads the entire sequence, while genotyping compares a person’s DNA against a disease pattern. The planned device was a small white unit about 8 inches by 6 inches, reusable so that one kit could test several family members; a test would cost $100 and return results in about two hours, against a more common four-week wait, with BRCA1/BRCA2 testing for breast cancer risk as the example. The team was building a graphene genetic sequencer and had gained access to lab space; in theory the finished product could perform whole genome sequencing. She described the company at that point as “a website and half of a product,” still in research, development and prototyping.⁠[2][10]

The article said that Acorn had been accepted into the NSF I-Corps program of the National Science Foundation for that fall, with a $50,000 grant, that a provisional patent was being filed, and that customer discovery interviews had been mostly positive. A 2024 VentureWell article likewise says that in 2021 Acorn Genetics was accepted to the NSF I-Corps program and raised $50,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, and that when Max Derbyshire took part in Jumpstart, she was already designing a genetic sequencer there.⁠[2][10]

On January 6, 2022 the Thiel Foundation announced a new class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, and she was item 3 on the list. The announcement gave her age as 21 and her location as Chicago, Illinois, and described her project, Acorn Genetics, as an at-home DNA testing company “focused on delivering consumers affordable and accurate genetic results while keeping data private.” It said that the class had 23 members, that each receives $100,000 over the two-year program, and that the only requirement is to pause college enrollment and focus on their technology or company.⁠[11]

The Daily Northwestern writes that she dropped out of Northwestern in January 2022 after winning the Thiel Fellowship, which awards a $100,000 stipend; the McCormick School of Engineering wrote in October 2022 that she was on a leave of absence from her McCormick studies after receiving the Thiel Fellowship, to pursue Acorn Genetics. A 2024 VentureWell article says that Acorn Genetics received $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, and Poets&Quants in 2023 likewise named her a 2022 Thiel Fellow.⁠[1][12][10][13]

The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program founded by Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry in 2011 for young people who want to build new things; fellows skip or stop out of college. As of November 2026 its website states that fellows receive a $250,000 grant.⁠[14]

On May 2, 2022 The Daily Northwestern profiled her as CEO and founder of Acorn Genetics, describing the company’s kit as one that lets people learn about their genetic health privately at home, aimed at people who need genetic tests but are uncomfortable with current options. She said that insurance does not cover 90% of genetic tests and that she did not want to pay thousands of dollars and wait a long while for results, adding, “I didn’t want to compromise my bank account or my information by allowing direct consumer testing companies to subsidize that high cost by selling the information.” She also cited an estimate of about 45.7 million Americans who want a genetic test but avoid one for lack of private, affordable options.⁠[1]

She said, “Startups come out of pain. They come because you have a problem or somebody you love has a problem.” The article says that after first pitching Acorn in her Principles of Entrepreneurship course she went on to join The Garage’s start-up programs Propel, Jumpstart, Tinker and Residency.⁠[1]

Rishi Jain, a Weinberg sophomore then serving as Acorn’s director of research, had joined in the fall of his freshman year, looking for a way to explore biology outside a traditional lab; he said that Acorn had drawn attention from scientists, doctors and investors, and that “Leaving Northwestern took a lot of courage and (Cornell) has only let that speed her up.”⁠[1]

On October 10, 2022, the McCormick School of Engineering profiled the Northwestern students and alumni on that year’s Chicago Inno “25 Under 25” list (nine of the 27 young innovators featured), including her: Acorn Genetics was born in the Principles of Entrepreneurship course of the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and makes at-home DNA testing kits meant to make genetic analysis more accessible while preserving privacy; she had also been named to the list in 2020, had taken part in The Garage’s Residency, Propel, X-Factor and Jumpstart programs while at Northwestern, and was then a Founder in Residence at The Garage.⁠[12]

On October 28, 2022, VentureWell published a Q&A with her, describing her as the founder of the VentureWell-supported E-Team Acorn Genetics, with a background in biomedical engineering. The company’s machine was called the AcornLab, described as a fully automated sequencer, and the product as a low-cost, at-home DNA testing kit for testing privately for genetic conditions.⁠[3]

She recalled that her co-founder had handled the technical work at first and that the microPCR machine went through repeated redesigns; after six months of failed prototypes the co-founder announced they were leaving to pursue a Ph.D., and “Overnight, I became a solo founder.” She then created a new microPCR design and spent the next three months in the lab executing it with two of her engineers.⁠[3]

She said that the company had raised $125,000 in non-dilutive funding, that its first 53 clinics had signed on to the launch, and that its latest accuracy results were within 5% of the error rate of the industry standard; it was then raising $500,000 as a convertible note, working toward a $2.5 million seed round at the end of the following year, expecting benchtop trial results within a couple of weeks, and had picked three pilot sites for the launch of its sequencer. The plan was to start with clinic testing, with home use by average Americans as the longer-term goal. She also listed sustainability measures: a recycled wood or metal casing, a reusable product, offering rental machines to make fewer products and save resources, no mailing materials, and avoiding petroleum-based plastics.⁠[3]

She said that VentureWell provided funding and that the E-Team program’s customer discovery interviews led to the company’s next customer, while the ASPIRE program gave guidance on investing and raising capital and introduced her to advisors and mentors. The Q&A notes that she was one of 19 early-stage student innovators selected to receive a stipend from the Innovator Stipend Program sponsored by QualcommQualcommQualcomm is a semiconductor and wireless technology company headquartered in San Diego, California. Founded in 1985 by Irwin Jacobs and six other former Linkabit colleagues, it built its business on CDMA technology and now rests on two pillars: its Snapdragon chip platforms and the licensing of cellular standard-essential patents. It has faced antitrust investigations and litigation in many jurisdictions, and in recent years has expanded into automotive, IoT, PCs and AI data centers.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

On April 4, 2023, Poets&Quants listed the 14 startups that made the finals of WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce $50,000 top prize, among them Acorn Genetics from Northwestern University. It described the AcornLab as a fully automated novel third-generation genetic sequencer for decentralized testing at homes or local clinics, with results in about half an hour, and a razor-and-blade business model: the device sold to clinics at $2,000 and consumable test kits at $50 each. The initial market was specialty clinics, with sickle cell disease as the first target, and the company said it had secured 75+ clinics in North America.⁠[13]

It named her as CEO, with 5+ years of genetic research experience, who founded the company because of her father’s health problem and was a Chicago Inno “25 Under 25” honoree; the other team members listed were Max Derbyshire, COO and co-founder, Ryan Abbott, CTO, and Rishi Jain, CRO, and the company came out of a nanotech lab, the Gianneschi Lab, and had an advisory board.⁠[13]

In a member spotlight of September 21, 2023, mHUB wrote that Acorn Genetics closed a $1 million pre-seed round in summer 2023; VentureWell wrote in January 2024 that the round was closed with 1517 Fund, 10vc and NUseeds, Northwestern University’s investment fund.⁠[15][10]

mHUB’s profile describes the AcornLab as a fully automated “third-generation genetic sequencer” using solid-state nanopore/nanoribbon technology, with five core components (a SiNx DNA filter, a continuous-flow microPCR chip, a graphene nanopore sequencer, signal amplification and digitization, and a machine-learning algorithm) that combine DNA extraction, amplification, sequencing and analysis in one portable long-read, low-throughput device; one passage gives single-sample tests in under 20 minutes and another results in under 15 minutes, at about 1/500 of the cost of traditional sequencers. The company’s next steps were to complete a 200-sample study, publish its research and begin pilots with its first customer, the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America; mHUB provided prototyping space and equipment, an entrepreneur community and Chicago-area contractors.⁠[15]

On January 16, 2024, VentureWell profiled Max Derbyshire, COO of Acorn Genetics: while studying political science and global health as an undergraduate at Northwestern University he met his fellow student Ana Cornell; the two found that their families shared the same health problem and that no private, affordable DNA tests were on the market, and together they developed a third-generation genetic sequencing device for fast at-home testing without sending DNA to a third party. Derbyshire said, “The big vision is to have an Acorn Lab in every home.”⁠[10]

The article lists the company’s support and awards: participation in VentureWell’s E-Team Program (Pioneer and Propel), with $25,000 in grant funding; second place in the Edward H. Molter Memorial Prizes for the Wildcard Round at the 2022 Rice Business Plan Competition; the Aspire Medtech investor-engagement program; the IMPACT Center’s OPENminds ChangemakerTech Award, with a $1,000 prize, at VentureWell’s OPEN 2023 conference; and second place overall for Derbyshire at the Aquillius Life Science Pitch Competition.⁠[10]

On February 13, 2025, Nava Whiteford, author of ASeq Newsletter, wrote about Acorn Genetics, describing it as developing a solid-state nanopore sequencing platform and listing the company’s claims for it: long reads, a cost under $10,000, no training required, results in minutes and reusable flow cells; the post links a video in which the company pitches the product.⁠[16]

On February 4, 2026, Nava Whiteford wrote again in ASeq Newsletter, under the title “Working Solid State Nanopores ‘Right Now’?”, showing a screenshot of Acorn Genetics’ website and calling it a solid-state nanopore DNA sequencing company; Whiteford regards this as historically the most challenging DNA sequencing approach, with an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars invested in academic and industrial research over about 25 years, and writes, “No proof-of-concept sequencing data has been shown from solid-state pores.” Whiteford also wrote that a roadmap seen earlier showed $2 million raised to build an alpha prototype, with a beta launch timed for around then.⁠[17]

As of November 2026, the website of Acorn Genetics, the company she founded, carries the headline “The Future of Genomics – Deployed Anywhere” and the page description “The power of precision genomics - unlocked for everyone” and gives Chicago as the company’s location; its offerings are molecular testing, assays and sequencing, the sequencing being a solid-state nanopore platform still in development, while the product on offer is SENTRI, a compact molecular detection device that runs targeted panels with no external lab, specialized training or multi-day wait, currently for brewing and fermentation, with agriculture, food safety, ethanol and biofuels, water and environmental, and healthcare marked as coming soon. The website lists no team members.⁠[18]

SENTRI’s page describes it as a compact benchtop device for running spoilage panels and says that its beer spoilage panel detects 28 beer spoilage species across 13 genera, the hop-resistance genes HorA, HorC and HitA, and diastatic wild yeast carrying the STA1 gene (validated against an inclusivity panel of 19 confirmed diastatic strains), with same-day results against 1–2 weeks for traditional plating and 3–7 days for outsourced labs (including shipping), at as low as $12 per sample, against about $35+ per plate for traditional plating and $99–$150+ at outsourced labs.⁠[19]

Her younger sister, Nicole Cornell, has said, “She’s always been a natural leader.” The Daily Northwestern writes that for a long time she did not tell people about a health problem in her family, worrying that it would change their perceptions of her.⁠[1]

Acorn Genetics: Official website: https://acorngenetics.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]