When Jane Peterson wants to understand something, she dives right into the details. Her career has taken her beyond the surface of our everyday world, straight through to the cellular and molecular levels of the human body.

The deeper you delve, the more complicated it gets, she said. Although she was talking about genetics, the same could be said for her career and list of accomplishments.

Peterson holds a doctorate from the University of Colorados department of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and thats just the start of it. She moved on to the department of human genetics at Yale University School of Medicine, then to the laboratory of biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health. She also got in at the beginning at an ambitious task the Human Genome Project.

Surrounded by scientists

Peterson grew up in Hamilton, a very small town in western Montana.

My entire family is somehow in science, she said, referring to her father, a physician, and her elder brother, who passed on an interest in mammalogy.

I trapped mice and did that kind of thing through high school, so I got into science pretty early, Peterson said.

Her post-high school education started on a unique footing, as she spent her freshman year attending Beirut College in Lebanon while her parents were working as missionaries in Iran.

It just seemed like a terrible opportunity to miss, she said. Beirut is a phenomenal place.

When it came time to choose a graduate school, she saw what she wanted at CU.

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Jane Peterson is the next president and CEO of Keystone Symposia