Eileen P. White

Cancer biologist Eileen White is the Deputy Director, Chief Scientific Officer at Rutgers Cancer Institute, Associate Director of the Ludwig Princeton Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Princeton University, and Board of Governors Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on identifying how tumor cells survive, reproduce and evade the immune system, with a goal of finding new treatments for cancer. Her work established that a DNA tumor virus oncogene functions by inhibiting programmed cell death by apoptosis and is a homologue of the human BCL-2 oncogene. She is also known for establishing that tumor cells induce intracellular nutrient scavenging by autophagy, which promotes their metabolism, growth, survival, and malignancy.

She received a B. S. degree in biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1977 and a Ph. D. degree in Biology from SUNY Stony Brook in 1983. She was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow and Staff Investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, then moved to Rutgers University where she contributed to the establishment of the Rutgers Cancer Institute.