Bazell has won numerous awards for his reports, which number over 2,000 to date. When he was awarded the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished achievement and meritorious service in broadcasting, the citation said Bazell's "reports have exemplified the best reporting on science and medicine. From transmission of the AIDS virus to innovations in cancer treatment, from the perceived dangers of cellular phones to alternative modes of health care, Mr. Bazell brings intelligence, understanding and reportorial excellence to the task. Robert Bazell is an outstanding television reporter who recognizes when to speak, when to listen and when to tell."

In addition to the Peabody Award, Bazell has been widely honored for his reporting. His extensive tracking of the AIDS epidemic, which began in 1982 when there were only a handful of cases, has included reports from all parts of the United States, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and South America, and earned the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and the Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation. Recently, Bazell won an Emmy in the Outstanding Informational or Cultural Programming category for his in-depth report on experimental brain surgery, featured on the newsmagazine "Now with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric." He won another Emmy for a three-part series on the brain, featured on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

Bazell is a 1967 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in biochemistry. He did graduate work in biology at the University of Sussex, England, in 1969, and was awarded a doctoral candidate degree in immunology at Berkeley. Most recently, Bazell has written a book, HER-2: The Making of Herceptin, a Revolutionary Treatment for Breast Cancer.

Bazell began his journalism career in 1971 as a writer for the "News and Comment" section of Science magazine. A year later, he moved to The New York Post as a reporter. In 1976, before he joined NBC News, he was briefly a reporter with WNBC-TV, the NBC Television Station in New York.