Peter Y. Kim

Peter S. Kim (born April 27, 1958) is a renowned American biochemist and former pharmaceutical executive whose work has reshaped modern virology and drug development. Early life saw him raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey by a single mother of Korean descent, where he earned his first paycheck at a Roy Rogers restaurant to fund his education. He graduated cum laude with an A.B. in chemistry from Cornell University in 1979, conducting research under George P. Hess, and earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Stanford University in 1985 under Robert L. Baldwin, focusing on protein folding intermediates. After a prestigious Whitehead Fellowship appointed by David Baltimore, Kim joined MIT as a professor of biology, became a member of the Whitehead Institute, and secured a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigatorship. His pioneering studies of coiled‑coil proteins revealed the molecular mechanisms by which viral membranes fuse with host cells, a discovery that underpins contemporary HIV‑fusion inhibitor design and informs vaccine strategies. In 2001 Kim entered Merck Research Laboratories as Executive Vice President of R&D, and in 2003 was named President, overseeing the development of more than twenty new medicines and vaccines, including Januvia, Gardasil, Isentress, Zostavax, Rotateq, and the biomarker‑driven immunotherapy Keytruda. Retiring from Merck in 2013, he returned to academia as the Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford and leads the Infectious Disease Initiative at the Chan‑Zuckerberg Biohub. His honors include election to the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering, the Ho‑Am Prize in Basic Science, and fellowships in multiple scientific societies, reflecting a career that bridges fundamental biochemical insight and tangible therapeutic breakthroughs.