Van Andel Institute has named Peter W. Laird, Ph.D., as the Peter and Emajean Cook Endowed Chair in Epigenetics. Laird joined VAI in 2014 and helped establish the Institute as a leader in cancer epigenetics. He explores how epigenetic mistakes contribute to cancer and develops technologies to identify these crucial alterations. Laird is a principal investigator for the National Cancer Institute’s Genome Data Analysis Network and played a leadership role in The Cancer Genome Atlas.