Barbara Graves, PhD, is senior director of laboratory research and program leader of the transcription group at Huntsman Cancer Institute. She is also professor and chair of the Department of Oncological Sciences at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

A nationally respected molecular biologist, Graves focuses her research on how genes are turned on and off by regulatory proteins called transcription factors. Transcription is the process by which genetic code information is passed from one cell to another. This process is essential for normal cell behavior and often goes awry in a cancer cell. She believes that a thorough understanding of how transcription factors and other molecular mechanisms control certain cancer-causing genes could lead to innovative new therapies and treatments for a variety of cancers.

A graduate of Rice University, Graves earned her PhD in developmental biology from the University of Washington and completed postdoctoral training at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Carnegie Institute of Washington. She and her colleagues mapped and identified the proteins that regulate transcription during her postdoctoral training. She serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Biology and is a past member of the review panel in molecular biology for the National Institutes of Health.