Dr. Peter F. Buckley, dean of the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, has been appointed chairman of the 10-member Board of Directors of the WCG Foundation.

The WCG Foundation is a public charity that raises and distributes funds to enable desperately ill patients access to experimental therapies. The Atlanta-based foundation also supports education and training in research ethics at academic institutions in the United States and provides scholarships for research professionals from resource-poor countries to study research ethics and management in this country.

The foundation was established by the WIRB-Copernicus Group, the world’s largest provider of regulatory and institutional review board services for research that involves human participants.  

Buckley will serve a one-year, re-appointable term as chair. Board members represent a cross section of nation leaders from the law profession, health care industry and research sectors.

Buckley, a psychiatrist, schizophrenia expert and investigator in the disease’s neurobiology and treatment, is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Congress on Schizophrenia. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and has chaired numerous National Institutes of Health Special Emphasis Panels, including a 2016 group on Early Psychosis Intervention.

He was the inaugural chair of the National Institutes of Health’s Interventions Committee for Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Personality Disorders and Disorders of Late Life. He is editor of the journal Clinical Schizophrenia & Related Psychoses, was the inaugural editor of the Journal of Dual Diagnosis and has published about 500 original articles, book chapters and abstracts.  Buckley is a member of the Administrative Board of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

The American Psychiatric Association honored Buckley with the Kempf Fund Award for Psychobiological Research and Mentorship in Schizophrenia in 2014 and the Presidential Commendation for Leadership Accomplishments in 2013. He received the University of Pennsylvania Edward A. Strecker, MD Award for outstanding contributions to the field of clinical psychiatry earlier this year.