![](https://www.aiche.org/sites/default/files/styles/ache_portrait_no-up-scale_nocrop/public/images/bio/peter.png?itok=jHfOCFBG)
Peter J. Turnbaugh, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology, the G.W. Hooper Research Foundation, and the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a CZ Biohub Investigator. For nearly two decades, 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 use interdisciplinary approaches in preclinical models and human cohorts to study the mechanisms through which the gut microbiome influences nutrition and pharmacology. 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 his faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco. Notable honors include the Kipnis Award in Biomedical Sciences, the Needleman Pharmacology Prize, the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, the Searle Scholars Award, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Disease Award.