The UAB Center for Exercise Medicine (UCEM) will host its 2023 Hunter-Bamman Award Lecture on April 14, 2023, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. CT at the UAB Kaul Finley Conference Center. Registration is required to attend.

Laurie J. Goodyear, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Joslin Diabetes Center will deliver the lecture entitled “Novel Mechanisms for the Benefits of Exercise on Health.” Goodyear’s research is focused on elucidating the molecular mechanisms through which exercise improves health with a major focus on metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

“I am a scientist dedicated to research that will lead to improved human health,” Goodyear said. “This research is bench to bedside, with animal and cell-based basic research leading to discoveries of novel molecules mediating the benefits of exercise on health, human studies to understand if these novel factors may translate to various types of patients, and research designed to determine the optimal types of exercise needed to gain the most beneficial effects on human health.”

The Hunter-Bamman Award Lecture is designed to honor the work of two pioneers of exercise research at UAB - Gary Hunter, PhD, Professor Emeritus Department of Nutrition Sciences and Marcas Bamman, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology and Founding Director of UCEM.

In 2013, UCEM supported the initial Hunter Award Lecture. The award was named in honor of Dr. Hunter who has been an international leader in exercise adaptation, energy metabolism and body composition research with more than 250 peer-reviewed articles in the area. The Hunter Award Lecture was held as part of the UCEM Distinguished Lecture Series from 2013 to 2020.

In 2021, UCEM renamed the lecture to the Hunter-Bamman Award Lecture to continue honoring Dr. Hunter while also recognizing the accomplishments of Dr. Bamman. Dr. Bamman was instrumental in increasing support and awareness for exercise medicine research both at UAB and across the nation. His research on exercise spans from biological underpinnings to clinical outcomes. He has been fostering and directing research for more than 30 years with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Veterans Affairs, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense. He is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and served on the ACSM Board of Trustees and ACSM Science Integration and Leadership Committee. He also served as Chair of the 2021 ACSM World Congress on the Basic Science of Exercise in Regenerative Medicine.

On the UAB campus, Dr. Bamman was responsible for helping establish the > 6000 sq. ft Exercise Clinical Trials facility, and he was also a key driver in garnering NIH support for the current Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), a Common Fund supported program designed to elucidate the molecular adaptations responsible for the wide variety of benefits of exercise on health.