Judith Lesnaw

Lesnaw was born in Chicago, Illinois to Leonard Josef and Virginia Dorothy (Hosford) Lesnaw. She has a younger sister, poet Virginia (Lesnaw) Hertzenberg.

Lesnaw earned her Associate of Arts from Wright Junior College. She then went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and a doctorate in llBiology (1969) with a focus in Virology, and postdoctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.^[1]

Lesnaw began working and researching at the University of Kentucky in 1974, where she became known as the "Virus Master" by her students.^[1] She particularly focused on viral proteins in order to develop gene therapy agents.^[2][3]

She was a member of the NIH Medical Biochemistry Study Section and co-program leader in the Markey Cancer Center at the University of Kentucky.^[1] She currently is professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky.^[4]

After retiring in 2010, Lesnaw moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to focus on photography, early music, and poetry. She had 11 photographs that qualified for the 2017 Projected Image-of-the-Year Awards as presented by the Delaware Photographic Society (DPS). She is an active DPS board member and serves as Director of Education. ^[5]

• Hammond, David C., Robert K. Evans, and Judith A. Lesnaw (1992). The L Protein of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Transcription Complexes is Specifically Photolabeled by 5-Azido-uridine 5'-Triphosphate, an Analog of the RNA Polymerase Substrate Uridine 5'-Triphosphate. J. Gen. Virol. 73:61-66.
• Hammond, David C., Boyd E. Haley, and Judith A. Lesnaw (1992). Identification and Characterization of Serine/Threonine Protein Kinase Activity Intrinisic to the L Protein of VSV New Jersey. J. Gen Virol. 73:67-75.
• van den Heuvel, J.F.J.M., D.W. Thornbury, T.P. Pirone, and J.A. Lesnaw (1993). A simple and efficient procedure for the oral inoculation of Trichoplusia ni larvae with polyhedrin-negative recombinant baculovirus. J. Virol. Methods 42:207-216.