Cornelius was awarded the National Science Scholarship (PhD) in Singapore. He was a thesis student and subsequently a research officer under Professor Marco Vignuzzi before moving to Oxford to pursue a DPhil in Condensed Matter Physics. In Vignuzzi's lab, he worked on defective viral genomes of influenza viruses and self-amplifying RNA vaccines. Currently, he is working on using biophysical methods to study Influenza under the supervision of Professor Achillefs Kapanidis and Professor Ervin Fodor.