PULLMAN, Wash. – Guy H. Palmer, Regents professor and founding director of the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health, College of Veterinary Medicine, will receive the 2013 Eminent Faculty Award from Washington State University during the Celebrating Excellence Recognition Banquet on March 29, part of WSU’s annual Showcase celebration of faculty, staff and student excellence.
Showcase reservations are being accepted at http://showcase.wsu.edu through Wednesday, March 20.
The prestigious award was created in 2000 to honor career-long excellence within WSU’s academic community. Palmer is the 13th recipient of the highest honor the university bestows on a faculty member.
For his research accomplishments at the interface of animal disease and human public health, Palmer was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine in the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, one of the highest honors for those in biomedical research and public health. He serves on the Board on Global Health of the academy and on the membership committee of the institute.
Palmer is a medical sciences fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He heads the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Training Program in Infectious Diseases and Microbial Immunology and holds an NIH MERIT award for research on pathogen emergence.
At WSU, Palmer leads disease control programs in east Africa and Latin America as well as directing laboratory research. He holds the Jan and Jack Creighton Endowed Chair in Global Health. The Allen School, which he leads, is a multi-disciplinary institute with the mission of addressing global disease challenges through research, education, global outreach and application of disease control at the animal-human interface.
He is president of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He is on the Executive Roundtable for the Washington Global Health Alliance and on the advisory boards of the Northwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the Biosecurity Research Institute at Kansas State University (KSU).
Palmer serves as an adviser to the NIH Fogarty International Training Program on Molecular Epidemiology in Eastern Africa, is a member of the NIH College of Scientific Review and is on the advisory board of the NIH Network of Biomedical Research Excellence.
His awards include the SmithKline Beecham Award for Research Excellence, the Merck Award for Creativity and the 2007-08 Sahlin Faculty Excellence Award for Research, Scholarship and Arts at WSU. He was awarded an honorary doctorate for his work in global health from the University of Bern (Switzerland) in 2011. He was recognized by KSU in 2009 with the Distinguished Alumnus Award and in 2011 was designated an alumni fellow.
Palmer earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and his doctorate in veterinary medicine at KSU. With support from the NIH, he completed a residency in pathology and a doctoral degree in infectious diseases at WSU. Following postdoctoral training, he was a faculty member in the Department of Comparative and Experimental Pathology at the University of Florida before returning to WSU in 1988.
In addition to the March 29 banquet, WSU Showcase includes the Distinguished Faculty Address (March 28); the Academic Showcase display of faculty, staff and student work (March 29); and SURCA, the Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (March 29).