Peter Turnbaugh, PhD

Peter J. Turnbaugh, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the G.W. Hooper Research Foundation at the University of California, San Francisco. For the past decade, his research has focused on the metabolic activities performed by the trillions of microbes that colonize our adult bodies. Dr. Turnbaugh and his research group are using metagenomics (culture-independent methods for microbial ecology) and gnotobiotics (germ-free and intentionally-colonized mice) to study the interactions between gut microbes and xenobiotics, including drugs, antibiotics, and dietary compounds. He received a B.A. in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology from Whitman College and a Ph.D. in Microbial Genetics and Genomics from Washington University in Saint Louis. From 2010-2014 he was a Bauer Fellow in the FAS Center for Systems Biology at Harvard University, where he established an independent research group prior to starting a faculty position. Notable honors include the Kipnis Award in Biomedical Sciences, the Needleman Pharmacology Prize, the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, and the Searle Scholars Award.