Stephen P. Bell PhD

Stephen P. Bell is a biochemist recognized for his work on the molecular mechanisms of the initiation of DNA replication in eukaryotic cells. He is known particularly for his discovery and characterization of a protein complex that recognizes the genomic sites at which DNA replication starts and his characterization of the events that select these sites. Bell was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee.

He graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with Degrees from the Integrated Science Program and the Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cell Biology (BMBCB) Department in 1985 and the University of California, Berkeley with a PhD. In Biochemistry in 1990 where he worked with Robert Tjian. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories with Bruce Stillman. He joined the Biology Department faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. Bell is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and received the 2001 ASBMB-Schering Plough Scientific Achievement Award and the 2009 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology.