Peer Bork is the Interim Director General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Together with Ewan Birney, who is the Interim Executive Director, Peer leads EMBL’s activities, continuing to deliver on the vision and priorities set out in the ‘Molecules to Ecosystems’ programme.
Before his appointment as Interim Director General Peer served as Director of EMBL Heidelberg (2020-2025) and as Head of the Structural and Computational Biology Unit (2001-2021).
Peer is Senior Group Leader in computational biology and microbiomics. He also serves as Scientific Director of the Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) expedition, an EMBL-led multinational project to study ecosystem interactions, involving 90 institutions.
Peer completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and and his Habilitation in Theoretical Biophysics at Humboldt University Berlin. He joined EMBL Heidelberg in 1991 as visiting scientist and became a Group Leader in 1995. His scientific work has been recognised by honorary doctorates of the universities of Utrecht and Copenhagen, as well as by honorary professorships at the universities of Heidelberg and Würzburg and the Fudan university of Shanghai. He published more than 700 research articles and is among the most cited researchers in the world.
Peer co-founded five successful biotech companies, two of which went public. He also served or continuous to serve on the editorial board of various journals, including Science and Cell, and functions as founding editor of the journal Molecular Systems Biology.
Peer received a number of awards, including the Novo Nordisk Foundation Novozymes Prize for outstanding contributions to biotechnology (2021), the Royal Society and Académie des Sciences Microsoft Award for the advancement of science using computational methods (2009) and the Nature award for creative mentoring (2008). He is also an elected member of the German national academy of sciences (Leopoldina), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Academia Europaea, and held two ERC Advanced investigator Grants.
EMBL is an inter-governmental organisation with 29 member states, one associate member and two prospect members that is led by the Interim Director General, Peer Bork, together with Executive Director, Ewan Birney, appointed by the EMBL Council.