Background and Training
Peter grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. His interest in research began during his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh where he studied traumatic brain injury in rats. After a summer research experience with Drosophila in Carlos Lois's lab at Caltech, he decided he preferred invertebrates, and hasn't looked back since. He went on to receive his PhD from Yale University where he was advised by Dr. Michael Nitabach. He studied wandering behaviors of Drosophila melanogaster larvae and found pupation site preferences are driven by the mechanical properties of the environment, hopefully providing greater context to wandering behaviors that will prove useful to understanding larval behavior in many different insect species.
Research Interests
In Dr. Harmit Malik's lab, Peter is continuing his foray into genetics and love of Drosophila. He will investigate male-harming mtDNA mutations and examine mito-nuclear genetic conflict to determine how the accumulation of male-harming mutations is managed to minimize reductions in male fitness. He hopes this work will improve our understanding of the relationship between mitochondrial and nuclear DNA and which molecular pathways are particularly vulnerable to mtDNA mutations.
Other Interests
Outside the lab, Peter enjoys reading, cooking, and watching nearly any sport. He is excited to live close to a mountain for the first time in his life and see how many weeks it takes before he surpasses his previous mountaineering high (~1,000 ft, IL and CT are very flat).