Eileen White

Eileen White is an American cancer biologist known for her research on the molecular mechanisms of tumor cell survival and cancer metabolism. She currently serves as deputy director, chief scientific officer, and associate director for basic science at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. She is also the distinguished professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Rutgers University, and the associate director of the Princeton Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. White was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

Education White received her BS in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1977 and a PhD in Biology from SUNY Stony Brook in 1983 in the laboratory of Arnold J. Levine. After receiving her PhD, she served as a Damon Runyon postdoctoral fellow at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory under Dr. Bruce Stillman from 1983 to 1986. She then worked as a staff investigator at that laboratory until 1990.

Research and career White has spent her career researching apoptosis, autophagy, and metabolism in cancer.

White began her career in cancer research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where she was investigating how genes from tumor adenoviruses cause cancer. She discovered that one of the viral oncogenes was a viral homologue of the gene that encodes Bcl-2, a mammalian protein that inhibits apoptosis, programmed cell death.

Awards and honors

MERIT award from the National Cancer Institute Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy