A former biostatistics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his wife have pledged $50-million to the institution’s School of Public Health, putting the university over its $2-billion goal in a fund-raising campaign 10 months before its scheduled completion date. The campaign is among the largest in American higher education, and the pledge is also among the largest.

University officials announced on Wednesday that Dennis Gillings, chairman and chief executive officer of the Quintiles Transnational Corporation, a pharmaceutical company in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and his wife, Joan Gillings, would be giving the money toward Innovation Laboratories, which will accept students and faculty members from Chapel Hill and other colleges, as well as researchers from the private sector.

The school will be renamed the Dennis and Joan Gillings School of Public Health.

“If we can refine methodologies that accelerate the speed with which clinical trials can be conducted and effective drugs approved, we can contribute to speeding pharmaceutical and other innovations to patients,” said Barbara K. Rimer, dean of the school, in a written statement. “These are the kinds of problems the Innovation Laboratories will address.”