Dr. Peter Van Loo is a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. In his postdoctoral research at the University of Oslo, the University of Leuven, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, he developed computational techniques to study copy-number alterations in cancer genomes, and approaches to study the subclonal architecture and life history of tumours from whole-genome sequencing data, a field coined “molecular archaeology of cancer”.

Peter’s research leverages massively parallel sequencing efforts to study cancer genes, mutational processes in cancer and tumour evolution. His work has sketched the typical evolutionary trajectories of many cancer types, allowing insight into the timelines of cancer development, as well as insight into how tumours metastasise.

Peter is the main lead of Evolution and Heterogeneity working group of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomics (PCAWG) initiative, and the genomics lead of the Sarcoma GeCIP of the 100,000 Genomes Project. Peter has been awarded a Cancer Research UK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize in 2015 and a VIB Alumni Award in 2017.