ABOUT
Fundamentally, Peter is a scientist and a population ecologist with a special interest in the dynamics of wildlife disease and he examines the impact of infectious diseases on wildlife populations and the consequences to ecosystems, humans and livestock.
For more than a decade he has examined how infections invade naive species - for example how infections invade recently introduced animals like wolves so as to understand disease emergence in humans. He has been working with an interdisciplinary group that has developed insights into how and why bats shed viruses that cause pandemics and how we can prevent spillover. He has also been examining the consequence of disease on the introduced wolf population in Yellowstone.
In Science, he demonstrated that parasites cause unstable population cycles in red grouse and developed and tested concepts that include: Parasite Mediated Competition, the Dilution Effect and the Healthy Herds hypothesis.
He has published more than 325 scientific papers, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (2008), am International Fellow of the Royal Society of Scotland (2010), a Fellow of AAAS (2012) and received an honorary doctorate from The University of London (2014). He was awarded The Carlton Herman Award (2005) and the Laurent Perrier Award (1985).
In Science Leadership , he directed The Huck institutes of the Life Sciences for 13 years, erecting new buildings, facilities and appointing faculty. He helped transformed the science strategy at Penn State, which was recognized with an Honorary Alumni Award in 2018.
In Education, he has been training African women in global health and in 2018 was awarded The Humanitarian of the Year in recognition of his efforts to help women's education in Tanzania. With support from the Random Good he worked with close colleagues from Paws Trails to build an educational field camp in Kenya and they donated the business to the local Maasai, to support their community. He takes undergraduate field course there every year and trains students in science, field ecology and wildlife photography.
In Outreach, he is a co- founder of the Random Good Foundation and currently involved in weaving film storylines that portray science with impact to show how ecology is shaped by individual decisions.
In Creativity, he has built and runs a small furniture building workshop called Spring Valley Woods that uses trees that have been condemned to give them a new life in our homes.
At heart, he is a naturalist, a biologist and an ecologist with a deep passion for nature. He has won many photographic competitions. He has fulfilled his childhood dream and owns 100-acre nature reserve that he actively manages in central Pennsylvania,