Born in the UK in 1949 and schooled in London, Peter studied Botany and Biochemistry at the universities of Reading and London before doing his PhD in Genetics at Tübingen University in Germany. His research career started in London where he investigated bioenergetic problems in mitochondria and chloroplasts. In Tübingen he worked on bacteriophage DNA replication before writing his PhD about making and characterising monoclonal antibodies as probes of eukaryotic chromosomes. He was a lecturer at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany and received a large WHO grant for molecular biological research on the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni. Moving to commerce in 1990, he was CEO of successful Biotech start-ups in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. He was also a lecturer in Physiology at the veterinary Faculty of the St. Istvan University in Budapest, where he taught German students. He joined Milestone in 2020, becoming head of Natural Sciences in 2021 and chair of Life Sciences inn 2022. He is very actively enganged in STEM teaching, especially in the field of Genomics and in the application of multiomics in Biological research. He is still a consultant for the Hungarian company SCICONS. Until 2021 SCICONS was the world’s only supplier of monoclonal antibodies against double stranded RNA that are very actively being used by scientists investigating SARS-CoV-2 and for the QC of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. These antibodies are now manufactured in Holland for a US-based company.
Peter Symmons
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biology, Biomedical Science, Psychology
Division: Natural Sciences
Appointment: Chair of Life Sciences
Position: Mentor, Module leader, Staff
Years: 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023