Peter J. H. Scott

Peter J. H. Scott FRSC CChem (born 27 July 1979) is a British and American chemist and radiochemist who is an associate professor of Radiology and member of the Interdepartmental Program in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan in the United States.He is director of the University of Michigan Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Center and runs a research group developing new radiochemistry methodology and novel PET radiotracers.

Peter Scott was born and grew up in North East England and attended Whitley Bay High School. He received his undergraduate degree with first class honors in medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry from Loughborough University in 2001, after conducting research with Raymond Jones. He subsequently obtained his PhD in organic chemistry from Durham University in 2005, where he was a member of Ustinov College, under the mentorship of Patrick G. Steel. Scott then moved to the United States to undertake postdoctoral research in organometallic chemistry at SUNY Buffalo under Huw Davies, and PET radiochemistry at the University of Michigan with Michael Kilbourn.

Scott runs a research group developing new metal-catalyzed methods for incorporating fluorine-18 and carbon-11 into bioactive molecules as well as novel PET radiotracers for imaging neurodegenerative disorders. His methodology work aims to improve the synthesis of PET radiotracers and he has an active collaboration with Prof. Melanie Sanford's group. Together they have developed methods for the Cu-mediated radiofluorination and radiocyanation of (mesityl)(aryl)iodonium salts, boronic acids and stannanes, as well as new methods for C-H radiofluorination. Scott has also introduced methods for green radiochemistry, for which he received the Michigan Green Chemistry Governor's Award in 2014. In 2019, Prof. Scott was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and received a Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research.