Karen Bell is a Professor of Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, in the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain and the GH Sergievsky Center. A Bronx native who graduated from New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, she completed internship in internal medicine at Harlem Hospital Center and neurology residency at The Neurological Institute at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. After completing a fellowship in Behavioral Neurology, she focused her clinical and research efforts to specialize on the evaluation and treatment of neurodegenerative cognitive disorders at the Taub Institute.

As the Director of the Education Core of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia University, she has developed physician and community education programs. She is an active member of the American Academy of Neurology and the National Medical Association, serving on various subcommittees. She is an external advisor to National Medical Association's Project I.M.P.A.C.T. initiative. She also serves on multiple NINDS Data Safety Monitoring Boards and has been a member of the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board since 2003. She was appointed to the New York State Council on Graduate Medical Education (NYSCOGME) by Governor Paterson in 2009 and chairs the NYS COGME Empire Clinical Research Investigator Program Workgroup. She has participated as a mentor in the Harlem Children Society science program for many years.