Peter Lopez was trained in Cytopathology and graduated from Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York in 1977, and immediately became involved in flow cytometry at the University of Rochester. In the lab of Dr. Leo Wheeless, Peter worked on the characterization of prototype slit-scan cytometers for automated cytopathologic diagnosis of cervical cancer.

He later managed flow Cytometry cores at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Harvard's Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston, and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City. He was also part of the team who brought the first commercial high speed cell sorter to the market, the Cytomation MoFlo.

Peter is currently a Research Assistant Professor in Pathology at the NYU School of Medicine, and is the Director of the NYULMC Flow Cytometry Facility.

Peter has published over 30 scientific articles or book chapters and serves on the Executive Council of the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry, and the Executive Board of the Association for Biological Resource Facilities.

Peter's career has been devoted to utilizing flow cytometry to facilitate research in biological science, and his interest in designing new applications has led to his lab's current research into utilizing centrifugal elutriation in the flow cytometry core.