Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies, UCSC

Peter started his tenure as the Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies at UC Santa Cruz in the middle of 2021. Prior to that, he was the professor of anthropology at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY) and served as the Associate Dean for International Education and Enrollment for the College of Arts and Science. There, he worked to enhance the recognition of the faculty in a project supported by the American Council on Education. He is an author or co-editor on a myriad of publications including 10 books, over 120 articles, exhibitions, and other works. He is serving as the director of the Marian E. White Anthropology Research Museum and the Institute for European and Mediterranean Archaeology. He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in archaeology from the University of Saarland in Germany. Then he did his postdoc not too far away at UC Berkeley.

At UCSC, he focuses on strengthening the graduate experience and creating a welcoming environment for graduate students from sundry disciplines, especially from underrepresented backgrounds.

(Source: Scott Hernandez-Jason, UC Santa Cruz Newscenter, June 10, 2021)

2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, ASU

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001 that was shared amongst two others for “their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.” He led a research team at the University of Washington using genetics to study how yeast cells divide. His work led to the discovery of the cell division cycle (CDC) genes and the exploration of methods to stop abnormal cell growth and to improved prevention and treatment of cancers. He is currently the Center Director for the Biodesign Institute and Professor in the Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. There, he leads the HoneyBee program that oversees clinical trials that use wearable devices. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science. Previously, he was the president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Before that, he earned his B.S. from Caltech and PhD from MIT.

He has expressed his excitement to discuss science education and communication with the next-gen researchers here at UCSC.

(Source: The Nobel Foundation, Sweden, https://www.nobelprize.org; Arizona State University,
https://www.asu.edu; https://www.ibiology.org)

Associate Director, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute

Karen Miga is currently an Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering and the Associate Director of the Genomics Institute at UCSC. In 2019, she was one of the leading scientists who organized an international team of scientists - the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium - to fill in the missing pieces of the human genome. Their efforts culminated in the first truly complete sequence of a human genome that is now available to access publicly. She is also the Director of the Reference Production Center for the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC). She was named one of Nature’s “one to watch” and one of TIME’s most influential of 2022. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Haussler lab, earned degrees from the University of Tennessee, Case Western Reserve University, and her Ph.D. from Duke University with work supervised by well-known human genetics expert Huntington Willard. She is a proud mom of two amazing little girls, who do not yet appreciate her work with genomes, and mainly applaud her skills as a "lava monster", catching bugs, and reading Elephant and Piggie books.

(Source: Karen Miga, Ph.D., Baskin Engineering; UCSC Genomics Institute June 10, 2021, Chancellor Cynthia Larive and Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer, UCSC Newscenter, March 31, 2022, https://www.ucsc.edu; Eisenstein, Nature: Technology Feature, January 25, 2022)

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