Peter worked in different areas of human papillomavirus (HPV) research since 1988. He contributed more than 400 publications to the HPV field and was instrumental in the development, standardization and clinical validation of different HPV tests. Peter was involved in the development of the HPV GP5+/6+ consensus PCR and was amongst the first to establish a plausible etiological role of mucosal HPVs in tonsillar cancer. Later he focused his research on HPV-induced oncogenic progression using both in vitro models and clinically welldefined patient material, aiming at the identification and characterization of genes involved in this process and candidate markers for risk assessment. His research group tested several viral and host markers in numerous screening and clinical trials for their capability to assessthe risk for cervical cancer and its high-grade precursors. He recently proposed a new pathogenesis concept of HPV-associated head and neck carcinomas.