Prof. Carol Prives is the DaCosta Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. She was educated in Canada, receiving her BSc and PhD from McGill University. Her postdoctoral training took place at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Weizmann Institute under the mentorship of Professor Michel Revel, after which she became a faculty member at the Weizmann Institute. She then joined the Biological Sciences Department at Columbia University where she was named the DaCosta Professor of Biology in 1995. Prof. Prives served as Chair of that department between 2000 and 2004. She has served as the Co-Chair of the Weizmann Institute's Scientific and Academic Advisory Committee since November 2017.
Since the late 1980’s her work has focused on the p53 tumor suppressor protein, the product of the most frequently mutated gene in human cancers. She and her group have elucidated aspects of the structure and function of the p53 protein especially as it relates to its roles as a transcriptional activator. In parallel, her group has examined how cancer related mutant forms of p53 regulate tumorigenesis. Work from her laboratory has also illuminated the functions of the key p53 negative regulators, Mdm2 and MdmX.
Prof. Prives has served as Chair of both the Experimental Virology and the Cell and Molecular Pathology Study Sections of the NIH and was a member of the NCI Intramural Scientific Advisory Board. She was also a member of the Advisory Boards of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Massachusetts General Cancer Center as well as the American Association for Cancer Research and is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. She also serves on the editorial boards of Cell, Genes & Development, Cancer Discovery and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Prof. Prives has received several honors including being named an American Cancer Society Research Professor, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and the AACR Academy. She has presented numerous named lectures and has received awards including the NCI Rosalind E Franklin Award for Women in Science, the Paul Jansen Prize in Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, and the AACR-Women in Cancer Research Charlotte Friend Memorial Lectureship Award. Prof. Prives has also received an honorary doctorate from McGill University, her alma mater.