Peer is the interim Director General of EMBL (European Molecular Biology laboratory), Europe’s only intergovernmental organization in life sciences. Before he served as the Director of the EMBL Heidelberg site and as head of unit (department) for structural and computational biology.
Peer is senior group leader in the areas of computational biology and microbiomics. He currently also serves scientific director of TREC, an EMBL-led multinational project (“Traversing European coastlines”) to study ecosystem interactions, involving 90 institutions. His scientific work has been recognized by honorary doctorates of the universities of Utrecht and Copenhagen as well as by honorary professorships at the universities of Heidelberg and Würzburg and the Fudan university of Shanghai.
Peer received his PhD in Biochemistry (1990) and his Habilitation in Theoretical Biophysics (1995). He has published more than 700 research articles, among them more than 90 in Nature, Science or Cell, and is among the most cited researchers in the world (e.g., >410.000 citations, H-factor of 248 according google scholar in 2025). He is or has been on the editorial board of various journals, including Science and Cell, and functions as founding editor of the journal Molecular Systems Biology.
Peer co-founded five successful biotech companies, two of which went public. More than 70 of his former associates now hold professorships or other group leader positions in prominent institutions all over the world. He received a number of awards, among them the "Nature award for creative mentoring" for his achievements in nurturing and stimulating young scientists, the prestigious "Royal Society and Académie des Sciences Microsoft award" for the advancement of science using computational methods and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Novozymes prize for outstanding contributions to Biotechnology. He further obtained two competitive ERC advanced investigator grants and is elected member of the German national academy of sciences (Leopoldina), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Academia Europaea