Todd C. Peterson

Dr. Peterson is currently the Chief Scientific Officer at the Allen Institute. He has more than 35 years of experience in academic research and biotechnology research and development and has driven product development and commercialization of innovative life science research tools and technologies.Prior to joining the Allen Institute, Peterson was Chief Technology Officer at Synthetic Genomics where he led an integrated team of scientists, engineers and informaticians to engineer diverse complex living systems. Before joining SGI, he led Synthetic Biology and Genomics R&D at Life Technologies (now ThermoFisher), a global leader in life science research tools. Peterson has held industrial R&D leadership and bench scientist positions with increasing responsibilities at Genicon Sciences, Trega Biosciences, Hybritech, Gen-Probe and Immulok, focusing on technology development and product commercialization. Peterson was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany and received his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, and both his M.A. in biological sciences and his B.A. in molecular biology and biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara.