Dr. Peter Laird directs the discovery project for DNA methylation biomarkers. He earned his B.S. and his M.S., Cum Laude, from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam while working in the laboratory of Dr. Piet Borst. He received his postdoctoral training from Dr. Anton Berns at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and from Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. He pioneered the use of mouse models to investigate the causal contribution of DNA methylation to cancer (Laird et al. 1995, Cell 81, 197), and invented two DNA methylation assays, COBRA (Xiong and Laird 1997, Nucleic Acids Res 25, 2532) and MethyLight (Eads et al. 2000, Nucleic Acids Res 28, E32), which has been issued a U.S. patent. Dr. Laird is currently associate professor of surgery and of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. He is Director of the USC Epigenome Center, Director of Basic Research for the Department of Surgery, and Program Leader of the Epigenetics and Regulation Program at the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He serves on various editorial and scientific advisory boards and is co-founder of ORCA Biosciences, currently Epigenomics, AG and of TherEpi Corp.