Cornelis graduated in pharmacist, studied in Oxford, United Kingdom and received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Louvain, Belgium in 1974. He studied antibiotic resistance plasmids in Bristol (United Kingdom) and transposons at the University of Freiburg and at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany.
After his appointment as Professor in Louvain in 1984, he investigated bacterial pathogenesis and joined in 1991 the Christian de Duve Institute in Brussels. In 2001, he was appointed Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland. Since emeritus in 2012, he pursues his research at the University of Namur, Belgium.
1980: Prize of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine.
1993: Member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine
1998 Elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (European Molecular Biology Organization)
2008: Member of the American Academy for Microbiology (AAM).
