Dr. Richard Casaburi has extensive experience and an international reputation for his clinical trials research in evaluating interventions designed to improve the exercise tolerance of patients with chronic disease. Defining therapies for COPD has been a major focus; his laboratory’s work has been a key driver in the establishment of the physiologic basis of rehabilitative strategies. His laboratory has completed over 100 clinical trials, most of them multi-center; for several, Dr. Casaburi has been lead investigator. He has been Site PI for 3 NHLBI-sponsored long-term large-scale multicenter clinical trials.
Dr. Casaburi has published over 370 scientific papers, over 325 abstracts and has given over 750 invited lectures across the United States and abroad. He is Founder and Medical Co-Director of the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center, whose laboratories occupy one-third of a 24,000 sqft research facility, the Chronic Disease Clinical Research Center, purpose-built with NIH funding in 2012, where multiple concurrent clinical research studies are performed. He is co-Director of the Respiratory Medicine and Exercise Physiology “Institute within Institute” of the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Dr. Casaburi completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree and doctorate in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Five years after joining the Department of Medicine faculty at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Dr. Casaburi pursued his medical degree at the University of Miami. Returning to Harbor-UCLA, he completed clinical training and rejoined the Division of Respiratory Medicine faculty. He served as Division Chief for six years. He is currently Division Associate Chief for Research.