Karl Peace, Ph.D.(R), being presented with the 2012 University System Board of Regents' Hall of Fame Award.

Georgia Southern University biostatistics professor and Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar, Karl Peace, Ph.D., was presented with the 2012 University System Board of Regents' Hall of Fame Award on March 31, 2012 in Atlanta.  Peace was one of only three recipients to receive the honor.

The award was established by the Board of Regents to honor those who exemplify superb leadership and support of higher education in the state of Georgia.  Recipients are nominated by their alma mater and are selected by an external panel based on their outstanding accomplishments and contributions to their institution.

"We are extremely proud of Karl Peace for being recognized with this very prestigious award," said Brooks Keel, Ph.D., president of Georgia Southern.  "Karl has made a tremendous impact in the field of public health through his generous endowment of the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health."

Peace was recognized during the Board of Regents' Salute to Education, an event hosted by the University System of Georgia Foundation, Inc.  The event brings together college and university presidents, regents, trustees, and higher education's corporate and political leaders to celebrate and recognize those who bring excellence to public higher education in Georgia.

Peace, who serves as a senior research scientist and professor of biostatistics in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, has a doctorate in biostatistics from the Medical College of Virginia, a master's in mathematics from Clemson University, a bachelor's in chemistry from Georgia Southern College and a Health Science Certificate from Vanderbilt University.
 
Peace's first career was in teaching and research at the university level. He previously taught at Georgia Southern, Clemson University, Virginia Commonwealth University and Randolph-Macon College, where he was a tenured professor of mathematics. He holds or has held numerous adjunct professorships at the Medical College of Virginia, the University of Michigan, Temple University, the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
 
His second career was in research, technical support and management in the pharmaceutical industry. He held the positions of senior statistician at Burroughs-Wellcome, manager of clinical statistics at A.H. Robins, director of research statistics at SmithKline and French Labs, senior director of GI Clinical Studies, Data Management and Analysis at G.D. Searle, and vice
president of worldwide technical operations at Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis. He then founded Biopharmaceutical Research Consultants, Inc., where he held the positions of president, chief executive officer and chief scientific officer.  He has made pivotal contributions in the development and approval of drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease, prevention and treatment of gastrointestinal ulcers, reduction of the risk of myocardial infarction, and treatment of anxiety, depression and panic attacks, hypertension, arthritis and several antibiotics.
 
He is or has been a member of several professional and honorary societies, including the Drug Information Association, the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society, the Biometric Society, Technometrics, the American Society for Quality Control, Biometrika, the American Statistical Association and Kappa Phi Kappa. He is a past member of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, National Research Council, National Academy of Science.
 
Peace has a lengthy record of philanthropy to education. He has created 21 endowments at five institutions. Fourteen of these are at Georgia Southern, including five for students from his native Baker County, Ga.  Additionally at Georgia Southern, Peace endowed the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health - the first school of public health in the University System of Georgia - and the first Eminent Scholar Chair in Biostatistics. He founded the Karl E. Peace Center for Biostatistics and the Karl E. Peace Public Health Library, and brought the Central Office of the International Chinese Statistical Association to the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health. Peace also created the internationally renowned Biopharmaceutical Applied Statistical Symposium (BASS).

His work has been published extensively in pharmaceutical, statistical, medical and scientific literature. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and five books and the editor or reviewer of several peer-reviewed journals, including the founding editor of the Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics, now in its 16th year. One of his books, Biopharmaceutical Statistics for Drug Development has been translated into several foreign languages including Japanese, and has been used extensively as 'the bible for drug development' in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry. He has given more than 150 invited presentations worldwide in the scientific, statistical, medical and pharmaceutical arenas.

-Story by Christian Flathman, Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University