Peter Kharchenko received a PhD in biophysics at Harvard University, studying gene regulation and metabolic networks under the advisement of George Church. He then completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in computational biology and genomics in the laboratory of DBMI's Peter Park. As a former Gilbert S. Omenn Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, he studied the epigenetic mechanisms that regulate the growth and maintenance of normal tissues as well as the disruptions of the epigenetic state that contribute to a variety of disorders.