Peter J Park

Dr. Peter J Park

Professor of Biomedical Informatics
Peter J Park

Peter is a computational biologist in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), specializing in epigenomics and cancer genomics. He was originally trained in applied mathematics at Harvard (AB/SM, 1994) and Caltech (PhD, 1999), writing his doctoral thesis on numerical analysis of partial differential equations. He became interested in molecular biology and genomics as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He moved to Children's Hospital Boston in 2001 as an instructor at Harvard Medical School and was promoted to an assistant professor in 2006 and to an associate professor in 2010. He became a founding member of the Department of Biomedical Informatics in 2015 and was appointed a full professor in 2016.

He is the director of the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics PhD program at HMS and a co-leader of the Cancer Data Sciences Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (profile). He is also a member of the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) PhD program at HMS (profile), and an affiliated member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is an editorial board member of Bioinformatics and formerly an associate editor of BMC Bioinformatics and a member of Faculty of 1000. He was a recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship in 2010 and the Harvard Medical School Young Mentor Award in 2012.

He has given talks at many universities and conferences, including Abcam conference in chromosome rearrangements/epigenetics, Advances in Genome Biology and Technology conference, American Associate for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, Beyond the Genome conference, Bioconductor workshop, BioIT conference, Boston University Medical Center, Biopharma Research Council conference, Broad Institute, Brown University, Cambridge Research Institute (UK), CHI Next-generation sequencing conference, Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh, Duke University, Genentech, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Stem Cell Institute Blood symposium, HMS Clinical Bioinformatics Summit, IFOM (Italy), INSERM workshop on epigenomics (France), Indiana University, International Collaboration for Clinical Genomics conference, International Conference on Bioinformatics (Atlanta, Georgia), Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge (UK), Italian Genetics Association meeting, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, National Institute of Health, Peking University, Penn State, RIKEN (Japan), Sanofi-Aventis, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul National University, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, University of Michigan, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Oslo, University of Oxford (UK), University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, University of Virginia, Southwestern Medical Center, University of Toronto, Wellcome Trust course at the Sanger Center (UK), Yale University.

He is an avid fan of classical music (learning from his wife, on the piano faculty at the New England Conservatory Preparatory School) and spends too much time driving around his teenagers to various activities.

Mathematical genealogy:
Nicole Oresme, unknown
Heinrich von Langenstein, Université de Paris, 1363
Johannes von Gmunden, Universität Wien, 1406 
Georg von Peuerbach, Universität Wien, 1440
Johannes Müller Regiomontanus, Universität Leipzig and Universität Wien, 1457
Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 1483
Nicolaus Copernicus, Università di Bologna, Università degli Studi di Ferrara and Università degli Studi di Padova, 1499
Georg Joachim von Leuchen Rheticus, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1535
Moritz Valentin Steinmetz, Universität Leipzig, 1550
Christoph Meurer, Universität Leipzig, 1582
Philipp Müller, Universität Leipzig, 1604
Erhard Weigel, Universität Leipzig, 1650
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Universität Leipzig, 1666
Christian M. von Wolff, Universität Leipzig, 1703
Samuel Klingenstierna, Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1728
Mårten Strömer, Uppsala Universitet, 1731
Frederick Mallet, Uppsala Universitet, 1752
Jöns Svanberg, Uppsala Universitet, 1796
Emmanuel Gabriel Björling, Uppsala Universitet, 1830
Carl Fabian Emanuel Björling, Uppsala Universitet, 1863
Anders Wiman, Lund, 1892
Arne Beurling, Uppsala Universitet, 1933
Goeran Borg, Uppsala Universitet, 1945
Heinz-Otto Kreiss, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, 1959
Björn E. Engquist, Uppsala Universitet, 1975
Thomas Y. Hou, UCLA, 1987
Peter J. Park, Caltech, 1999

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.  (Proverbs 1:7)

Contact Information

Department of Biomedical Informatics
Countway Library of Medicine, Room 318
10 Shattuck St
Boston, MA 02115
p: 617-432-7373