Peter Thompson qualified as a veterinarian with a BVSc at Onderstepoort, University of Pretoria (UP) in 1990 followed by an internship in large animal medicine at Cornell University and then an MMedVet in medicine at UP in 1999. He worked as a Senior Lecturer in production animal medicine at UP before developing an interest in epidemiology and completing a PhD in epidemiology at Utrecht University in 2006. He worked as Associate Professor and then since 2014 as Full Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, UP. His particular field of interest is the epidemiology of emerging and zoonotic diseases, particularly vector-borne diseases, at human/livestock/wildlife interfaces, with a particular focus on Rift Valley fever and other mosquito-transmitted viral zoonoses.