Peter W. Laird

Peter W. Laird is a Professor and Peter and Emajean Cook Endowed Chair in Epigenetics at Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He previously held academic roles at the University of Southern California (USC) from 1996–2014, including directorship of the USC Epigenome Center. His research focuses on epigenetic mechanisms in cancer, particularly DNA methylation dynamics and their role in tumor initiation, progression, and translational applications.

• Education: B.S./M.S. from University of Leiden; Ph.D. (1988) from University of Amsterdam
• Postdoctoral Training: Netherlands Cancer Institute (Anton Berns), Whitehead Institute (Rudolf Jaenisch)

Research Themes include:

• Mechanisms of DNA methylation in cancer
• Development of mouse models for epigenetic studies
• Single-cell epigenomic analysis
• Clinical applications of epigenetics in prevention/detection

Key Contributions: Co-development of all epigenomic data for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), discovery of replication-associated DNA hypomethylation, and creation of tools like BISCUIT for DNA methylation analysis. His work has been recognized through the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list and major grants from NCI.

Mentorship includes advising graduate students and postdoctoral fellows such as Nathan Spix, Felicia Ebot Ojong, and Jae Min Park. He has published over 122 peer-reviewed papers in 2024 alone, with 63 in high-impact journals.