Peter was introduced to mass spectrometry (MS) in 2003 whilst on a study abroad program in Australia. He returned to the UK and obtained a Ph.D. (University of Edinburgh) in biophysical chemistry from the research group of Perdita Barran (now Director of the Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative MS, University of Manchester). His Ph.D. thesis explored the shape that protein molecules adopt in the gas phase, using an ion mobility MS instrument that was home-built in the Edinburgh lab. This fostered his interest in MS-based technologies and revealed its potential scope across multidisciplinary environments.
He moved to London in 2009 to start his career in proteomics, initially working for three years in private industry then joined his first core facility at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in 2012. This role taught him how to engage and collaborate with academic researchers and professors, consulting and guiding them on how to best utilise MS to interrogate their biological questions.
In 2016, Peter joined his second core facility at the newly opened Francis Crick Institute in London (an impressive partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King's College London, the MRC, University College London and the Wellcome Trust). The Crick is the largest single biomedical laboratory in Europe so Peter was able to work across a large range of projects, enabling him to specialize in implementing and developing quantitative MS-based proteomic approaches.
Peter arrived at UT Austin in the fall of 2020 and joined Assistant Professor Luis Natividad’s nascent research group (College of Pharmacy) as a senior research fellow. He successfully implemented a dual quantitative proteomics and phospho-proteomics workflow for in vivo samples using a TMT-labelling approach.
In the fall of 2021, he joined the CBRS Proteomics core facility (his third core facility). Peter brings a wealth of knowledge of working in a core, as well as on modern techniques involving data-independent acquisition (DDA) and data-independent acquisition (DIA) approaches applied to areas such as: global proteomics, sub-cellular proteomics, and immuno-/affinity-purification pull down experiments. Additionally, he specializes in quantitation via labelled (e.g. SILAC and TMT) and label-free approaches, as well as the associated data analysis and statistical testing.
Peter aims to provide UT scientists with high quality Proteomics data that will help inform the next step in their research.
