Dr Peek received his BS degree cum laude from Davidson College in 1984. Later he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received his MD degree in 1988. After Internal Medicine training and Chief Residency at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, he completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1995. In 1996, he became an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt, where he is now the Mina Cobb Wallace Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology and Director of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition. Dr. Peek is also co-Director of the Vanderbilt Digestive Diseases Research Center at Vanderbilt. Dr. Peek has received several awards and honors and is a member of numerous professional societies. He is the recipient of the Grant Liddle Scholarship for Excellence in Clinical Research (1994), the Glaxo Institute of Digestive Health Basic Research Award (1995), the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Foundation Basic Research Award (2001), the Young Investigator Award from the American Gastroenterological Association (2002), and in 2003 he was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation. A charter member of the Gastrointestinal Mucosal Pathobiology Study Section at NIDDK, Dr. Peek served as co-chair of the Biology Section for the National Cancer Institute-sponsored Stomach/Esophageal Cancers Progress Review Group in 2002, and was an invited participant in the NCI-sponsored Inflammation and Cancer Think Tank Meeting June 2–4, 2004, which was organized to identify research advances and opportunities in the study and clinical applications of inflammation on cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. He also serves as a Section Editor for Gastroenterology and is on the Editorial board of the American Journal of Physiology: Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology. Dr. Peek’s research efforts are grounded in understanding the molecular mechanisms through which H pylori enhances the risk for gastric cancer using both in vitro and in vivo models.