Carl Bazil completed his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by a combined MD/Ph.D. program at Emory University, with a doctorate in pharmacology. He was a resident and chief resident in Neurology at New York University, and completed his fellowship in Epilepsy/EEG at the Neurological Institute of New York.

He was then Assistant Professor of Neurology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Since 1996, he has been an attending neurologist at the Columbia Comprehensive Epilepsy Center. He is the Director of the Epilepsy and Sleep Division of the Department of Neurology, and of the Columbia Comprehensive Epilepsy Center.