Peter was born and raised in Santa Rosa, CA. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In his senior year, Peter worked in David Raulet's laboratory, studying the factors that activate natural killer cell ligands. Following graduation, he stayed in Berkeley and became the lab manager of Russell Vance's laboratory. Never much of a rebel, Peter excelled in compliance of the laboratory sort. In the Vance Lab, he studied the immunological effectors of the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. Peter joined the Malik lab in 2022 for his PhD studies and is co-advised by Michael Emerman. Peter studies the functional consequence of altered subcellular localization on antiviral restriction factors.