Peter J. Peters

Peter J. Peters (born 22 August 1957) is a professor of nanobiology and a distinguished university professor at Maastricht University. Peters is best known for his work in electron microscopy (EM) and cellular immunology. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Nanoscopy.

Early life and education Peters was born in Hunsel, the Netherlands in 1957. The eldest of six children, he often accompanied his father—a farmer—on errands. On one such visit to a local artificial insemination station, Peters discovered a keen interest in science.

Peters obtained his PhD in 1991 from Utrecht University. His PhD thesis, "Cellular immunology at the subcellular level", was completed under the guidance of Hans Geuze, Jannie Borst, and Hidde Ploegh. During this time, he studied the ultrastructure and trafficking of MHC class II molecules, as well as how the role of secretory granules in T-cell function. Following his PhD, Peters completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the laboratory of Richard Klausner, where he studied the regulation of endocytosis.

Career From 1994 to 1998, Peters worked at Utrecht University. He then moved on to the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where he worked from 1998 to 2013. There his group focused on sorting within the eukaryotic cell endomembrane system, primarily using cryo immunogold-electron microscopy. In 2014, Peters was appointed professor of nanobiology and co-director of the Maastricht Multimodal Molecular Imaging Institute at Maastricht University. He has frequently chaired international conferences and symposia, most recently the 19th International Microscopy Conference in Sydney, Australia in 2018.

Peters founded the Netherlands Postdoc Career Development Initiative (PDCI) in 1998 and served as its dean until 2002. PDCI was highlighted in the international press, in Cell, The Scientist, and Nature. Peters was editor of the journal Microscopy (formerly the Journal of Electron Microscopy) from 2008 to 2012.

In 2009, Peters was invited by the Society of Histochemistry to deliver the Robert Feulgen lecture.

In 2010–2011, Peters led the initiative and coordinated the establishment of the Netherlands Centre for Electron Nanoscopy, a Dutch national research infrastructure.

Publications Peters has published over 125 papers that have been cited over 24,000 times. His Hirsch index is 69.