Peter Tontonoz received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. His Ph.D. thesis was carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and his postdoctoral training with Dr. Ronald Evans at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He completed his residency training in Pathology at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Tontonoz is currently Professor of Pathology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. The focus of his laboratory is the control of gene expression by lipids and the role of nuclear receptors in lipid metabolism. His major research contributions include the delineation of the function of LXRs in atherosclerosis, and the elucidation of mechanisms of crosstalk between cholesterol metabolism, inflammation and immunity.

Dr. Tontonoz has authored over 100 publications, many appearing in premier journals including Cell, Science, Nature Medicine, and Cell Metabolism. Dr. Tontonoz is the recipient of the Jeffery M. Hoeg Award from the American heart Association, the Richard. E. Weitzman Award from the Endocrine Society and a Bristol Myers-Squibb Freedom to Discover Award in Cardiovascular Disease. He serves on the leadership council of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the editorial boards of JCI, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Molecular Endocrinology and the Journal of Lipid Research.