Peter Gerstoft received the M.Sc. and the Ph.D. from the Technical University of Denmark, (in Structural Engineering) Lyngby, Denmark, in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and also a the M.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario, (in the Alan G Davenport Wind Engineering Group) London, Canada, in 1984.

From 1987-1992 he was employed at Ødegaard and Danneskiold-Samsøe, Copenhagen, Denmark, working on forward modeling and inversion for seismic exploration, and from 1989-1990 he was Visiting Scientist at the Ocean Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, and at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Cape Cod. From 1992–1997 he has been a Senior Scientist at SACLANT Undersea Research Centre La Spezia, Italy, where he developed the SAGA inversion code, which is used for ocean acoustic and electromagnetic signals.

Since 1997 he has been with Marine Physical Laboratory, University of California San Diego. His research interests include global optimization, modeling and inversion of acoustic, elastic and electromagnetic signals.

Peter is a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America and elected member of the International Union of Radio Science, Commission F.