Peter Palese is a United States microbiologist, researcher, inventor and the Horace W. Goldsmith Professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City,[1] and an expert in the field of RNA viruses.

He is also on the editorial board for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology from 1970 until 1971 when he joined the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as an assistant professor.

[7] Furtherance of this technique has been used by Palese and his colleagues in reconstructing and studying the pathogenicity of the extinct but deadly 1918 pandemic influenza virus.

As of 2022, Palese and his team are working on creating a universal influenza virus vaccine, and SARS-CoV-2, specifically for low and middle-income countries.