Joe Peters earned a B.S. in Biology from Stony Brook University, a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Maryland at College Park and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Peters is a professor of microbiology with a research focus on genomic stability and chromosome evolution, Peters is interested in how mobile genetic elements like viruses, transposons, and extra-chromosomal plasmids have been self-assembling useful genetic combinations for millions of years in bacteria.