Close Up: Virginia Gordon

Position: Vice president, InVitro International, Irvine.

Birth date: Aug. 18, 1944.

Residence: Huntington Beach.

Family: Mother of four children, ages 12 to 21; eldest daughter at UC Berkeley.

Education: Bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, 1966; master’s degree from UC Berkeley in theoretical biophysics in 1974; doctorate from UCLA in biophysical chemistry in 1978; postdoctoral studies at UC San Francisco in structure of lipoproteins in relationship to cardiovascular disease in 1980.

Business philosophy: “Mine is a scientific goal to create the technology to evaluate and understand chemical toxicity and develop the tools to protect man and the environment.”

Goal: “If we don’t have ways to measure what chemicals do, we have no way to understand how to remove them from the environment nor how to remove those chemicals to which man is exposed. These in-vitro technologies will address all these areas. We all have to care about this aspect of the future.”

Relaxation: “I travel a lot in my role for this company. To be effective, I collaborate with scientists from around the world. And I love that. What do I do to make traveling palatable? I run--and that’s nice. I spend as much time as I can with my kids. Those are about all I have time for. I try to eat and sleep somewhere in between.”

Fade to black: “I’d like to be remembered as being part of the breakthrough of the technology that allowed us to deal with the major issues of chemical toxicity in the 2000s.”