Colorado State University

Biography
Prof. Jean Peccoud joined the department in January 2016 as the Abell chair in synthetic biology. In his current role Prof. Peccoud combines computational biology and cell biology efforts to develop predictive models of the phenotype encoded in natural and synthetic DNA sequences. Prof. Peccoud is also the founder of GenoFAB, LLC which provides bioinformatics services and training to biotechnology companies and government agencies.

Shortly after completing a PhD in immunology, Prof. Peccoud switched to computational biology by working on molecular noise in gene regulatory networks in 1989 and published one of the first articles on this topic in 1995. In 1993, he recognized the importance of real-time PCR and developed new statistical techniques suitable to analyse this new type of data. In 2002, he observed with excitement the very early development of synthetic biology, which enabled him to lead a very exploratory project in a corporate environment and later start an academic research group dedicated to this topic.