Brent R. Stockwell grew up in Bay Terrace, a suburban neighborhood in New York City and graduated from Hunter College High School. He received his A.B. in chemistry and economics from Cornell University, graduating summa cum laude. He received his PhD in chemistry, doing his doctoral studies under the supervision of Stuart L. Schreiber at Harvard University. He is currently an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and an Associate Professor at Columbia University with joint appointments in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Chemistry; he is also a member of the Motor Neuron Center and the Cancer Center at Columbia Medical School.

Dr. Stockwell's research involves the use of chemical tools to define cell death mechanisms in order to better understand and treat cancer and neurodegeneration. Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, he was an independent Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where he directed his own laboratory, developing new tools to enable the exploration of biology with small molecules.

Dr. Stockwell is a member of the editorial board of Chemistry & Biology. He was awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface in 2002, and a Beckman Young Investigator Award in 2007. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow and a National Science Foundation Research Fellow. He received two Harvard University Certificates of Distinction in Teaching. While at Cornell University, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and he received a number of awards for excellence in chemistry. Dr. Stockwell is the author of 54 publications, 34 patent applications and 10 issued US patents. His first book, The Quest for the Cure, was published in the Spring of 2011.