Peter J. van der Spek has been appointed as professor and head of the department of bioinformatics at the Erasmus MC. He obtained his doctoral degree in 1995 in the field of molecular carcinogenesis by cloning cancer predisposition genes.

Van der Spek has 6 years of pharmaceutical experience from Akzo-Nobel and Johnson & Johnson and holds several international academic appointments in Japan, Australia and USA. The bioinformatics group at the Erasmus MC focuses on the support of datamining and analysis. This expertise is used for fundamental research, molecular diagnostics, molecular imaging, (forensic) molecular biology and support of clinical trials. Erasmus MC is one of the largest medical centers of the Netherlands. Van der Spek runs a neuroscience research program which provides the biological and technological basis for the bioinformatics group. It concentrates on the way the genome as a whole contributes to the evolution, development, structure and function of the brain.