Peter Heutink, PhD

• Genetics
• Parkinson's disease
• Neurodegeneration
• Functional genomics
• Advanced Parkinson’s therapies

Peter was trained in human genetics and received his PhD on the Genetics of complex diseases at the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam the Netherlands. He has served as Professor and head of the Department of Medical Genomics at the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam from 2003-2012 and co-founded the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR), a joined research institute of the Life Science Faculty at the VU University Amsterdam and the VU University Medical Center. He was the Director of the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Neurosciences (ICEN) and a co-founder of the Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam.
From 2013 until 2022 he served as the speaker of the German center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Tuebingen, Germany. He then moved to Alector Inc, a company that develops therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, as their Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) until October 2024. Peter currently working as an independent consultant.
His research interests are the identification and functional characterization of genes associated with the risk of Neurodegenerative Diseases and the development of genetic targets into therapies.