Peter Jackson, Ph.D.

Dr. Jackson is a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology (Baxter Labs) and of Pathology at Stanford.  He received a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Yale College before pursuing graduate work in Chemical Physics at the University of Chicago and receiving a PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University, completing his thesis on tyrosine kinase signaling with David Baltimore at MIT’s Whitehead Institute.   Following postdoctoral work at UCSF with Mark Kirschner, studying the cell cycle, Dr. Jackson joined the faculty at Stanford in 1996. His laboratory studies focus on the biochemical and cell biological mechanisms controlling cell division, signaling and cancer, using proteomics and advanced imaging techniques. He has made a broad set of discoveries related to regulatory complexes and signaling in the cell cycle, ubiquitin-dependent proteolysis, cancer, signaling within the primary cilium and the link between cilia and human genetic diseases.  Dr. Jackson spent from 2005 to 2013 at Genentech, where he was a Director and Staff Scientist focused on the discovery and validation of new targets for cancer chemotherapy. He is currently focused on understanding core mechanisms driving differentiation, especially in the context of ciliary signaling and using protein networks to find new core cancer driver pathways and explanations for unexplained human genetic diseases.