Peter is an engineer and geneticist who was appointed professor in 2003. He obtained his PhD in 1995 in the field of molecular carcinogenesis with research into DNA repair genes. The identification of cancer predisposition genes was led by Prof. Dr.J.H.J. Hoeijmakers and Prof. Dr. Dirk Bootsma, co-founder of the faculty of medicine at Erasmus University.

Van der Spek has 6 years of pharmaceutical experience at Akzo-Nobel and Johnson & Johnson and has several international academic appointments in Japan, Australia and the US. From Erasmus MC he has a strategic partnership with the Stanford spin-off Deepcell Inc. His work within the Department of Pathology and Clinical Bioinformatics at Erasmus MC focuses on supporting data mining and multi-omics analyses. This knowledge is used for fundamental research, morphological imaging, (forensic) molecular biology and support for clinical diagnostics.