Peter Ianakiev, PhD graduated in 1993 from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, with Master of Sciences in Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering. His thesis was on Duchene/Becker muscular dystrophy, research he conducted in Laboratory of Molecular Pathology at University Hospital Maichin Dom, Sofia. Later he earned Doctorate in Molecular Biology from Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with a thesis on Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy–Lom (HMSNL).
Peter conducted Postdoctoral research focused on Developmental Biology and limb morphogenesis at University of Connecticut, USA. He identified genes responsible for several developmental disorders, including Split Hand Split Foot Malformation, Acromesomelic dysplasia and Acheiropodia. He joined Human Genome project in 2001 as Development Group leader in Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research, Boston USA. Later, he was research fellow and Instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital, where his was focused on Renal Disorders and in particular Polycystic Kidney Disease and Integrins structure and function.
Peter joined Biotechnology industry 2007, first as synthetic biologist and later as early developer on several platforms for Next Generation Sequencing, including Intelligent Biosystems (acquired by Qiagen), Polonator (Danaher) and Solid State Nanopore sequencing (Nabsys Inc.)
Peter Ianakiev, PhD is founder of Hera Biosciences, company focused on improvements of Illumina Next Generation Sequencing platform and development of new applications and services for personalized medicine and research.