Richard Casaburi, PhD, MD is an Associate Chief for Research in the Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He is Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine. He occupies the Grancell/Burns Chair in the Rehabilitative Sciences at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Dr. Casaburi completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He followed with a master’s degree and doctorate in biomedical engineering, also 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, Dr. Casaburi returned to school to pursue his medical degree at the University of Miami, School of Medicine in Florida. He returned to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where he completed an internship, residency and pulmonary fellowship and rejoined the faculty of the Division of Respiratory Medicine. He became Chief of the Division and served in this position for six years.

Dr. Casaburi established the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center in 1999, a clinical research facility dedicated to improving the lives of COPD patients. Dr. Casaburi has completed more than 75 clinical research studies, including participation in three major NIH multicenter projects. He has published more than 290 papers and 260 abstracts and has presented over 700 invited lectures on the topics of respiratory physiology, exercise science, pulmonary rehabilitation and COPD disease management.

Dr. Casaburi is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation. He serves as president of the Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation, a non-profit corporation dedicated to advancing the scientific basis and practice of pulmonary rehabilitation and is a member of the Board of Directors of the COPD Foundation and the American Thoracic Society.