European Respiratory Society Honors PERF’s Dr. Richard Casaburi with its Top Award

05 Aug European Respiratory Society Honors PERF’s Dr. Richard Casaburi with its Top Award

In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the strengthening of respiratory medicine worldwide, Dr. Richard Casaburi, received the 2020 Presidential Award from the European Respiratory Society.

Professor Casaburi completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He followed this with a master’s degree and doctorate in biomedical engineering from RPI, before completing a post-doctoral fellowship in biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. Five years after joining the Department of Medicine faculty at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Professor Casaburi returned to school to pursue a medical degree at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. He completed an internship, residency and pulmonary fellowship at Harbor-UCLA and rejoined the faculty of the Division of Respiratory Medicine. He became Chief of the Division and served in this position for six years. He is currently Associate Chief for Research in the Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine. He has occupied the Grancell/Burns Chair in the Rehabilitative Sciences at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center since 2001.

Professor Casaburi established the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center in 1999. A clinical research facility dedicated to improving the lives of COPD patients, Professor Casaburi and his group of investigators have completed more than 75 clinical research studies, including participation in three major NIH multicenter projects. He has been invited to present over 750 lectures on the topics of respiratory physiology, exercise science, pulmonary rehabilitation and COPD disease management, and has published more than 340 papers and 300 abstracts: his papers have received over 69,000 citations.

Professor Casaburi is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation and is a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the European Respiratory Society. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the COPD Foundation and is immediate past chair of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly of the American Thoracic Society.

You may know Professor Casaburi because, since 1993, he has served as President of the Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation – a non-profit foundation dedicated to advancing the scientific basis and practice of pulmonary rehabilitation. It is likely that many of our blog readers will have met Professor Casaburi at one of the many visits he made over the years to patient support groups around the Los Angeles area. However, if you have not met him, you can watch several of his patient-oriented presentations on COPD or pulmonary rehabilitation on our videos page.

All the PERF family is delighted to congratulate Rich on this singular honor!