Carol Prescott earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Experimental Psychology from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Psychology with an emphasis in clinical research and quantitative methods from the University of Virginia. Her clinical internship at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) focused on geropsychology. She then had post-doctoral training in psychiatric genetics and epidemiology at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she then joined the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry. In 2005 she moved to the Department of Psychology at USC, where she is affiliated with the Quantitative Methods area and the Clinical Science doctoral program. She also has a joint appointment in USC’s Davis School of Gerontology.

Dr. Prescott’s research has been funded by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (including the Institute on Aging, Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, Mental Health, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse), as well as the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. Dr. Prescott has received several awards in recognition of her research, including the Fulker Award from the Behavior Genetics Association and the Theodore Reich Prize from the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics.