Peter Banks is President Emeritus of the Institute for the Future. He has a rich and varied academic and corporate leadership background from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, and several recent technology startup companies. Peter is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has received several professional recognitions for his contributions to NASA, the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Royal Society (London).

Prior to joining IFTF, Peter was Chairman and acting CEO of Akonni Biosystems, a microarray-based DNA diagnostics startup company, as well as founder and managing partner of XR Ventures, a technology investment group. Earlier, he served as president of ERIM International, Inc. (an Ann Arbor, MI non-profit, government technical services and research organization) from 1997-1999, which he restructured into a world-class remote-sensing organization. While there, he introduced a program for commercializing various technologies, including a three-dimensional earth-mapping system adopted by Intermap Technologies, Ltd., which later became a publicly traded company in Canada.

Peter's academic background includes serving as Professor and Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director, Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory at Stanford University. He has also served as the Principal Investigator for NASA on many scientific projects, including three Space Shuttle experiments in the last decade. In the mid-1980s he headed an international group of scientists who assisted NASA with science planning and accommodations for the International Space Station.

The author of more than 200 scientific papers and books, Peter received the Distinguished Public Service Medal from NASA in 1986, and became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1993. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Pennsylvania State University and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.