Rate My Professor Mark Peifer

Mark Peifer serves as the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 1988, where he began graduate work in the Bender lab, and completed postdoctoral research with Eric Wieschaus at Princeton University. Since founding his laboratory at UNC in 1992, Peifer has conducted research at the interface between cell and developmental biology. His work examines epithelial tissues, exploring the roles of cell adhesion machinery, cytoskeletal regulation, and Wnt signaling in regulating cell fate and tissue architecture during development and in disease states such as cancer. The lab employs the fruit fly Drosophila as a primary model system, integrating genetic approaches with advanced cell biology, microscopy, and biochemistry, and supplements these studies with work on cultured cells.