Kevin Prise is Emeritus Professor of Radiation Biology, at the Johnston Cancer Research Centre (JCRC), Queen’s University Belfast, where he has been since 2007. Prior to this, he was Head of the Cell and Molecular Radiation Biology Group at the Gray Cancer Institute in Northwood, London. A Biochemistry graduate of Aberdeen University, he received his PhD in Cell Biology and Biochemistry, from the University of Aberdeen, on the mechanisms of action of the chemotherapeutic methotrexate. He joined the Gray Laboratory in 1985 working with Barry Michael, Melvyn Folkard and Boris Vojnovic, under the directorships of Jack Fowler, Julie Denekamp and Ged Adams. In 2007 he was recruited by Professor Paddy Johnston to setup a Translational Radiation Biology program at the newly opened Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (now JCRC) at Queen's University Belfast. He served as Deputy Director of the Centre from 2010 to 2018 under the directorships of Professor Dennis McCance and then Professor David Waugh.

He has developed wide-ranging interests in radiation biology including research on low dose radiation risk, radiation quality, cell and tissue signalling mechanisms. He has played a major role in the application of microbeam technologies for delineating the response of cells to targeted single tracks of radiation. His seminal work defined the impact of bystander signalling after targeted irradiation and its implications for future advanced radiotherapy where immune signalling and abscopal responses have significant potential. At Queen’s he developed an Advanced Radiotherapy Group (ARG) integrating Radiation Oncology, under the leadership of Professor Joe O’Sullivan, and Clinical Radiotherapy Physics, under the leadership of Professor Alan Hounsell, with translational radiation biology.  Together they are developing new biological based models for optimising advanced radiotherapies such as Intensity Modulated Radiotherapy and particle therapies. A current focus is the application of radionuclide approaches in advanced prostate cancer.

He is a Past-President of the US Radiation Research Society (RRS), a previous RRS Michael Fry award recipient and Friedrich Dessauer awardee of the German Radiation Research Societies. He was inducted as a Fellow of the RRS in 2025. He was the 2024 recipient of the Weiss Medal from the UK Association for Radiation Research, the 2018 Douglas Lea Lecturer, awarded by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine and the 2018 Bacq and Alexander awardee from the European Radiation Research Society. He has recently served on the UK Government Expert Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) and previously Editor in Chief (Scientific) of the British Journal of Radiology.  He has supervised over 50 PhD students and numerous Masters and undergraduate students. He has taught on the FRCR Part 1 course at the Christie Hospital for the last 15 years and also launched this course internationally with Prof Catharine West in Kolkata, India in 2015 and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2017. He is a previous Part 1 examiner for the Royal College of Radiologists and a current Honorary Member. He has published over 400 papers (h=75), with over 18,000 citations.