Peter J. Gruber, MD, PhD

Dr. Gruber is a Professor of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine and a Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Over the past two decades, his clinical practice has focused on surgical repair of complex congenital heart disease; and research on understanding it’s molecular and genetic underpinnings and developing innovative therapies to improve cardiac function. He has contributed to discoveries that have shown the importance of epigenetic factors, especially histone deacetylases, in cardiac development and its response to ischemia-reperfusion injury. He earned his B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (1985), M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1992), and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, in Biochemistry and Biophysics (1992). He completed his dissertation in Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism at Rockefeller University. His post-doctoral fellowship in Cardiac Development was completed at the American Heart Association-Bugher Foundation Center for Molecular Biology at the University of California, San Diego (1994-1996). His clinical training in General and Cardiothoracic Surgery was completed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital (1992-1999) and Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2002). He has held faculty appointments as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Surgeon, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (2002-2011); Associate Professor, the D. Rees and Eleanor T Jensen Presidential Chair of Surgery, and Chief, Section of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine (2011-2014); and the Johann L.F. Ehrenhaft Professor and Chairman, Department of Cardiothoracic of Surgery at the University of Iowa (2014-2017). He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Surgical Association and has contributed over 150 scientific publications.