Dr. Peter A. Jones was born in Cape Town, raised and attended college in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and received his Ph.D. from the University of London. He joined the University of Southern California in 1977 and served as director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center between 1993 and 2011. In 2014, he was appointed chief scientific officer of Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a position he held until he returned to the lab full time in 2026. Jones also served as president of VAI and its Graduate School from 2024 to 2026. Under his leadership, the Institute grew into a world leader in cancer epigenetics and was ranked no. 5 among North American nonprofit research institutes in biological sciences by the Nature Index in 2025.

His laboratory discovered the effects of 5-azacytidine on cytosine methylation and he first established the link between DNA methylation, gene expression and differentiation. He pioneered the field of epigenetics, particularly its role in cancer, and helped develop novel therapies for cancer. Dr. Jones is a past president of the American Association for Cancer Research, a Fellow of the AACR Academy, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published more than 300 scientific papers and received several honors, including the Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. He and his colleague Dr. Stephen Baylin shared the Kirk A. Landon Award for Basic Cancer Research from the AACR in 2009 and the Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society in 2011. He shared the 2022-2023 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology with Drs. Stephen Baylin and Andrew Feinberg for their groundbreaking work in cancer epigenetics.