Dr. Pruitt received a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1995. Afterwards, he pursued post-baccalaureate research training in the biological sciences at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He then moved on to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and under the direction of Channing Der, PhD, completed doctoral training in Pharmacology in 2001. Dr. Pruitt’s interest in epigenetics began during a short stint of postdoctoral training with Yi Zhang, PhD, HHMI, at the Lineberger Cancer Center at UNC. Dr. Pruitt continued postdoctoral training under the direction of Stephen Baylin, MD, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Department of Oncology. There, Dr. Pruitt focused on cancer epigenetics.