Dirk Schnappinger joined Weill Cornell Medical College in 2001, where he currently holds the position of Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology. He received his Ph.D. from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 1998 for work on the repressor controlling tetracycline resistance in Gram negative bacteria. After his graduate work Dr. Schnappinger began to study the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), first at UC Berkeley, in the lab of Dr. Lee Riley, and then at Stanford under the guidance of Dr. Gary Schoolnik, where he helped to adapt microarray-based RNA profiling to the analysis of bacterial pathogens. 

His current research aims to help develop new medicines for the treatment and prevention of Tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease that still claims over a million lives each year. This work began with developing a regulatory system that allows to turn Mtb genes on and off, both in vitro and during infections. His lab now applies this and other genetic approaches to evaluate Mtb gene products as new targets for TB drug development by documenting the impact of their genetic inactivation on growth and persistence of Mtb in vitro and in mice, help elucidate the mechanisms by which small molecules inhibit the growth of Mtb, improve safety of the M. bovis BCG vaccine and develop a human challenge model for TB.